The places that make me
The places that make me
You could say that I’ve always been in a state of motion. As a toddler I was already in possession of a passport, though it was a restricted one and allowed entry to only one country: neighbouring Singapore. I was weaned on countless interstate family road trips around Malaysia, plotting loops on the map through Perak, Kuala Lumpur, and Johor—and across the causeway to that little red dot, Singapore, where the other half my relatives live.
Later, I studied Law in England, and being abroad for that extended period emboldened me, later, to see more of the world for myself, unmediated by friends and family. After graduating, I went backpacking through Central America, and it was there that I realised I could be alone in an unfamiliar place without feeling lonely, speak Spanish without butchering it, and salsa without inflicting serious bodily harm. It’s hard to overstate how those months changed the idea of travel for me. It was the first experience of my life to draw out some of the contradictions I felt I was living, and continue to live, uncomfortably with, but it was also life-affirming and helped me to begin understanding the lives that existed outside myself and my general milieu. Travel was no longer about escapism, if it ever was, but a closer communion with the world, which, for me, always goes hand-in-hand with writing.
These days, because of work commitments and emotional ties that bind, you’ll usually find me in Kuala Lumpur and sometimes in Berlin, where my partner is based; and occasionally in London, where I used to live and where many of my friends have stayed. However, I still look for every opportunity—rarer now—to set up camp elsewhere for a season. Years back, looking for a possible way back to Latin America, I landed in Lima, Peru, and stayed for six months. I had planned to stay longer, but it didn’t work out that way. I haven’t been back to the region since, but I continue to carry it with me, and the memories I collected there sometimes still slip, unbidden, into the backdrop of my present life.
Still, even as other countries and cities sometimes better express my desires, Malaysia remains my emotional anchor, even when I resist it, when I want to get away. You know that line from the movie Gone Baby Gone? Something about how it’s the things you don’t choose that make you who you are? My restlessness was never about finding somewhere “better” to be; I find something to love about every place I’ve been and grow nostalgic for them when I’ve left, wherever I am. Through all my peregrinations I’ve continued to call Malaysia home, but I am ever curious about all the places I’ve never been, hoping to better understand the interconnections of our world.
Before I ever crossed physical distances, though, I wandered even further between the pages of books: The Call of the Wild, Moby Dick, The Secret Garden, Great Expectations, The Hound of the Baskervilles… and let’s not forget the Mandarin audio tapes of Chinese fairytales my mum bought me, which I would listen to at bedtime with the covers pulled over my head and my back pressed against the wall, to help me learn the language. Could any child who had such vicarious adventures grow up without longing to be out in the world, part of the world?