On Missing

Today I'm feeling a bit homesick. I miss Australia and I miss my friends back in Cairns. While this is now home, there are some things that we loved in Australia that will never be here. We miss being able to converse in fluent English, sharing a common cultural understanding that dictates social norms, and being able to understand the machinations of the society. I especially miss the comfort and ease that comes with understanding how things in the society run. Do I line up? Where? Is there a machine where I take a number? Will it offend if I do that? How do I pay? Who do I pay? What type of shop do I go to buy one of those? Is it worth the effort shopping around, or will I never find one? How do I make a complaint? What should I expect of a person in this situation? It takes me hours to translate letters and bills received. The questions are endless, the confusion is endless, and it can be quite tiring dealing with the barrage of experiences that bombard you when living in a new culture. It simultaneously makes it more difficult and less so, that Malaysian culture is not just one but three, however I feel this will be the topic for another blog post.

Showing people photos of the beautiful, clean mountains, beaches and suburbs of Cairns reminds me of what we left behind, and looking at them floods me with sweet remembering. I have always been able to appreciate the incredible good fortune of being born Australian and being blessed to live in Cairns, and I need to be careful to limit the comparisons. As a newcomer, it is also not my place to try and change things here, though I find it hard to resist doing so. It would be wrong for me to try to make Malaysia like Australia- this would be to deny the unique things that this country has to offer. I need to enjoy and appreciate Malaysia for what it is, its own beauty and experiences- good and bad, as all are valuable. Is it possible to love two homes?

It's actually easier to not think too much about the people we have left behind. Strangely, it's not the family I'm missing most. I speak to them often, family are always in my thoughts, and besides, their presence wasn't something we could appreciate everyday, even when we lived in Australia. It's the many people who brushed through my life on a daily basis, shaping the course of my life in tiny, seemingly insignificant moments, or, in some cases, obvious and very significant ones. I miss all our friends from church, but especially, of course, the little group of very special friends that grew from there. I miss my work colleagues at my numerous workplaces, and the friends all around town that we always lamented we never had enough time for. If once my days were filled to overflowing with people and happenings, now, though no less busy, my days are strangely bereft of that joyous thing called companionship. Some people are regulars on Facebook, and both of us have become somewhat avid followers of the goings-on of those that we are able to follow. The regular, small tidbits of irrelevant rubbish from someone's life can be more connecting that the otherwise far more enlightening and informative newsy letters received. I suppose that it is more like real life, in a way. The removal of our social network has, of course, drawn the inventor and I closer together. We have come to really rely on each other very heavily for companionship and I am sure, as our new life unfolds here in Malaysia, that our relationship will continue to benefit from this.

In the blog of an Aussie expat living in Vietnam, I read of her reasoning of why expats cluster together. I have always shared her viewpoint- that comfort is found with familiarity, and we enjoy best the time spent with those whose language and culture is most familiar. I think this is why we enjoy the company of Desmond and Swee Yee, who we met at church in Ipoh. Unfortunately, in Kampar there is no great expat community, in fact, the Canadian family remain the only westerners we have met in Kampar, despite the large university here. We have been received with welcome arms in our new church, and our only regret is that Ipoh is far enough away that many people do not consider it for a regular drive. With our spiritual needs met adequately by Sunday services and Friday night cell group in Ipoh, we plan to sample some more of the offerings of English-speaking churches here in Kampar, with the primary intention being, I unashamedly admit, of meeting people who live close by.

It's not that I ever am in need of something to do. In fact, after the first few quiet weeks here, the list of things to do has restored itself to its former unmanageable glory, and for that I am grateful. When we first arrived, my primary goal was getting us settled in and our home sorted out. Once that was accomplished, new projects began to emerge and the busyness slowly returned. We spent a lot of time before leaving Australia dealing with jobs that must be done, and I had the unexpected extra two weeks to get everything sorted out, so when we arrived, the “to do” list was uncharacteristically short. I can happily report that, once again, the days are not long enough to even scratch the surface of the list, and prioritising has become the first task of each day.

I have spent some days working on an application for funding for our project, and we still have a lot of work to be done on that, and on business planning in general. The Inventor's head has been so “in the clouds” of late, that my input is needed for the everyday practicalities. He even struggles with intellectual pursuits he would normally tackle with ease, and at my suggestion has given up trying to learn the local language. He is, by choice, allowing his head and the majority of his vast and extraordinary thought processes to remain floating in the clouds and on the task to which he has been assigned. His bedtime reading is often thick bundles of tiny pages which I am told are patent applications- numerous similar patents found in searches, which must be scanned and analysed to ensure the uniqueness of his own pending patent, but just as importantly, to glean ideas from others who have expertise in the area.

In addition to helping The Inventor, I spend my days looking after our financial and physical resources both here and in Australia. In this last week, amongst other smaller tasks, I have advertised a car for sale, contacted the   sorted out one long-outstanding and complicated problem with the tax office, finally chosen and ordered bicycles for the two of us, paid bills and shuffled money between bank accounts, spoken to Cairns Council about a refund I have been chasing, sent rent statements to tenants, recharged our toll card, recharged prepaid mobiles, and researched verbs and affixes in Bahasa Melayu. I am trying to teach myself Bahasa Melayu, and I teach English lessons three times a week to some of the lab and office staff, in exchange for help with Malay. Planning these lessons takes up quite a lot of my time, as I have not taught English as a Second Language for a long time, have never taught adults before, have never tried to learn a language while simultaneously teaching another, and have a wide range of abilities to cater to. The other thing I have had to do this week, is to research what trips the two of us might be able to take out the country next weekend. We must leave and return, as our 30-day visitor visas will expire soon, and the company has not yet been registered (once the company registration is complete, we will be free to stay as long as we like, with The Inventor as a director of the Malaysian joint-venture company). Malaysia is very accommodating, and we will readily obtain a new 90-day visitor visa on our return, but to do this we must leave the country. It is foreign to us to have so many affordable options for a long weekend away, “overseas”. After searching flights from Ipoh, KL and Penang to places such as Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Laos, and Indonesia, we are currently investigating an Island in the south of Thailand which can be accessed by boat from the north of Malaysia, via a Malaysian Island called Langkawi.

Life continues to be challenging, rewarding, exciting and dull, and Malaysia interesting, friendly, breathtakingly beautiful and appallingly dirty. We work hard at the Inventor's difficult and massive project, we take the challenges for the learning experiences they are meant to be, we lap up the variety and opportunities. This is life, and, for the most part, I think we are dealing with it well. Bring it on!