Stranger in My Own Home

Penang is a state in Malaysia.

It is also a state in divide, quite metaphorically and geographically.

There are two Penangs. Very few people outside of Malaysia knows that Penang actually refers to a state in Malaysia, one of 13 states. It consists of an island and a stretch of land on the Peninsula of Malaysia, divided by a small strait of sea.

But for most tourists, Penang is simply the beautiful island itself. In fact, for most people IN Penang Island, Penang IS the island and the island alone.

I was born on the island.

But I was raised in Province Wellesley. That's the part of land that is NOT the island. I had spent the most part of my life there. I lived there.

That is, until recently. Or more specifically, last year.

My parents decided to move to the island after their retirement. No longer are they tied to the old house by vocation (the schools they taught in), relation (my grandmother passed away) and incubation (I have since fled the safety confines of their nest to pursue higher education on another island).

So they packed their bags, so to speak, and moved in with my 3 aunts living in the old house my grandpa bought a long time ago.

I'm no stranger to that house. I spent many Chinese New Years there, as a visiting guest. But this Chinese New Year, I have to call it my home.

Nobody likes change. Especially when I had to figure out where everything was.

It hit me that I'm a stranger in my own home when I had to ask my mom, "Mom, I'm thirsty. Where do we keep the drinking water?"

It says something about how much at home you are when you're thirsty and you had no idea where the drinking water is.

At that moment, I realized, I had to find my own home.

And then I thought of you.

And I know where my home will be.

First Article (Not of Clothing or the Constitution)

There's always a good time for a beginning. And the answer is usually, "Now, or Never".

A fervent advocate of the concept I have been, but a lousy adherent to the doctrine I am. Like most people, I need markers for change. Markers that are sometimes fateful, sometimes just plain old clichéd. The marker for the Genesis of this blog, unfortunately (or perhaps it's fortunate, from a different point of view), is of the latter kind. And corny as the title of this post may sound, cornier it is the next sentence of which I'm about to write.

A new year. A new beginning.

So here I am starting a new blog. After all, I've always resisted the urge, never jumped on the bandwagon. I didn't even wave as the bandwagon drove by.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate blogs. Quite the contrary, I happen to be an avid blog reader. Blogs like drawn.ca, mocoloco, and postsecret offered me plenty of distractions with all things beautiful. But I could never quite catch on to THE OTHER kind of blog. You know, blogs that yak away on all things personal and overladen with pictures, music and videos like a Christmas tree gone wrong. They are Diaries on Steroids (and maybe with a whiff of Coke too) hiding in digital sheep's clothing. And since I don't find these blogs very symphonic, I didn't want to contribute my share of the noise too.

Until now.

By why start at all? The reason for that is simple: I'm being nudged into it.

I met Lizzie in a writing event. We started our dance of flirtation over a common love interest in Neil Gaiman and W.H. Auden. From time to time she would sprinkle my room with lovely words scribbled on notes, and I would occasionally assault her with amateurish poetry. She has a blog now where she writes beautifully (and there's that secret diary which she won't let me read yet). You can say that our relationship would not have blossomed had the art of writing not evolved in human civilization. (And a whole host of other stuffs would not have come to be as well. For example, exams and tabloid magazines. But let's not get into that now).

Relationships don't work one way. I can't be the one who's always reading her thoughts and not sharing my words. So here we are. As a sign of my commitment and a willingness to perform the virtual-literary equivalent of undressing myself one article of clothing at a time, I shall write and post online, one article (of words, not clothing) after another, for as long as Kaishi shall fancy reading them.

Now back to what I was talking about before - the Timing.

It's Chinese New Year. A fitting time indeed to get started. And what better place to start than in the very hometown where I was born in - Penang.

But wait, that would mean we've moved on to talk about the place, and not the time. We'd need a separate article for that. So I shall end this one here.

And thus, this blog is born.