Immigrants

Lately I have been reading about Asians in South East Asia. The generations of migration from China in search of a better life and the culture they brought along with them and how they have built themselves through adversity integrating their beliefs into a new environment adapting and learning the language as they went along. With my family, we had been settled in Malaysia for three generations. Only one of my many thirteen aunts and uncles had moved overseas and even then, it was to Singapore so geographically and culturally it wasn't very distant.

My grandparents arrived in Malaysia when they were eighteen. Their sea passage was definitely a lot less pleasant than mine and they had far less resources to get them settled in. Yet they have left this world with a legacy they built themselves on Malayan soil; fourteen families they leave behind all established in their own lives and keeping the values instilled in them. We all heard the stories of the hardships they had to endure growing their young families and businesses in this foreign land. My grandmothers couldn't even read or write. I shudder to think how scary the world would have seemed to them in that age.

I reflect upon my life and how in my short thirty three years I have found myself forging life in three continents. Each time it is similar, well I guess I can't count Malaysia cause I was born there, but there's always the foreignness at first where you don't know how to get anything done. Mainly you don't know what the equivalents are so where do you go to find stuff? Who do you call to fix things? How do you size up the society and area to decide if it is somewhere you'd like to settle down in?

I remember always the feelings of homesickness initially, but also the tingling sense of excitement knowing an adventure is just beginning. There is the figuring out of curiosities, like how does one get from A to B whilst perusing the nest of coloured train lines on a local transport map, or how to set up your finances so that you can purchase things to make you feel more at home? Even getting a phone line or internet just seems so frustrating especially when you usually have to use the phone or internet usually to get these set up to begin with!

Then the fun begins of picking out where you'd like to live. Exploring new places and neighbourhoods, finding out where the locals would hang and imagining yourself in their shoes seeing if it fits you. Some suburbs are bustling and inviting, others quiet and serene, some just grey and cold and void of signs of life. I reflect on the many homes I have lived in in my lifetime, thirteen so far and I know I haven't yet found my forever home, does this make me a nomad?

When you've sorted that out you begin to attend social environments to meet new friends. This is usually the chance I get to reinvent myself. My first move to Sydney I wanted to lose my geekiness (it wasn't considered cool yet then) and be part of the 'cool' crowd that explored the bar and club scenes together as we had all just reached the drinking age. My second move to London I found myself more open to meeting people who I could connect with mainly young working people discovering London/Europe together but I didn't hide who I was at this stage because socially I was more certain of who I am by now and what I firmly like and don't like.

Then slowly, after a year usually, this new country suddenly feels like home. You don't have to look up where you are going everyday. In fact you walk purposefully because you have somewhere to be, someone who is expecting you to turn up. You know where to buy you favourites and your home no longer smells unfamiliar to you.

I wonder if this was how it was like for my grandparents, but I suspect not. The world was tougher on them and to some even these days, I know it is still tough for them. I am grateful. I want my daughter who has been born in a country that's different from her mum's and her dad's birth countries, different too from her grandparents and great grandparents, I want her to know where she's come from and I want her to know who we all are (and were).

If the world is a big place then hopefully, being descended from diverse cultures, she'd always find similarity between hers and the new people she's meeting. If the world is small then may she always find where she needs to be and can belong.

Last night I had a dream of all the housemates I had shared a place with since I left my parents' house and how now we decided to find a home together again. It didn't end pretty so I think I know that that was a time of my life we'd never be able to recreate. But I am ever grateful we had a chance at it to begin with.

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