Jetlagged

And so 2010 begins with the announcement over the plane speakers, the stilted English of the non-English speaking flight attendant. Adjacent to my seat, the lanky, brown-haired man/boy folded into his tiny seat like origami, unfolds. He pulls a shiny blue party hat onto his curls and blows on his noisemaker several times.

I remain awake in my seat, as I have been and will for the next eight hours.

Truth be told, going back to Malaysia was a shock to the system. For the first week, I was overwhelmed with the number of people (Gold Coast has only 500,000 inhabitants), the human and traffic jams. The humidity was suffocating. My folks had moved to a new housing development, far far away from where I had grown up. My friends were miles away. The shopping centres (read: meeting places) were no longer within a 1 kilometre radius. The extra car had been sold and this new area was completely off limits to any means of public transportation.

But then, I grew accustomed to it. Having my family around, having Matt Matt call me Koo Koo, having to rely on others for transport. Joking around with my brother about our impending (and dreaded) resemblances to our parents. Trying to read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (accidentally stolen from Wendy's House in Bangkok) through my mother's talking, Korean soap operas on the computer, Barney-the-purple-dinosaur on the TV and the dogs' barking. Seeing friends through scheduled meet-a-thons at delicious (4 times), Dome (twice) and other cafes I'd missed so much.

And so a month passed much too quickly yet much too slowly. Quick, because I hadn't had the chance to meet so many other people; slow, because there were people in Gold Coast I missed.

"How are you doing there?" A friend asked.

"It's crazy," I confessed. "I have no privacy. I'm surrounded by people all the time. Yet I know, when I'm home, I'm going to miss everyone."

The prophecy held true. I really miss everyone.