Coming Home

In the past 8 months since we’ve moved back to K.L, I often get asked the same questions. “Do you miss America?” Didn’t you want to stay in San Francisco?” “Has it been hard adjusting back to life in K.L?” Being asked these seemingly innocuous questions sometimes feels like being stabbed in the chest. People tend to want to hear a nice neutral middle ground answer, so we can all quickly move onto the next topic. As such, I typically respond with a non-committal flighty type answer ( “"Sometimes!” “You mean Trump’s America?” "Yeah, sure." "It's been great.").

But the truth is, these are deeply complex and personal questions with deeply complex and personal answers.

 Do I miss America? 

I admit, when we first moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the spring of 2014, I was most excited about my significantly expanded shopping horizon. J.Crew! Madewell! Whole Foods! Farmers Markets! Organic food! Just the promise of having access to amazing seasonal produce like heirloom tomatoes, Meyer lemons and ramps(!?) made me feel giddy and lightheaded.

We had an amazing year at MIT — I relished immersing myself in a learning environment, a safe haven to decompress, experiment and absorb new information. The pockets of time off school made it possible for us to travel up and down the Eastern seaboard in a rented ZipCar, where we visited towns and cities we'd only heard of and seen on TV. We survived an insane winter holed up in our little apartment with a record breaking 108.6 inches of snowfall and ate our weight in lobster rolls. And despite language and cultural barriers, we made wonderful life long friends from all over the world. There were times it felt like going back school was just an excuse for a bunch of 30-45 year olds to regress to our youthful ways (clubbing on school nights, designing our yearbook pages, forming cliques that came together and fell apart in a matter of weeks), but mostly it was like we had joined a really cool racially diverse cult.

When we moved to San Francisco in the summer of 2015 for work, I missed our life in Cambridge and the tight network of friends we leaned on. We were lonely without the security blanket of 121 classmates, in a new city, seemingly overrun with dirty hobos and discarded syringes.

But then, the clouds literally parted. On a perfect day in San Francisco, the sky is a startlingly clear blue and fast moving clouds sweep up and over the hilly terrain of the city before disappearing into the Bay. We spent our weekends traversing the city by foot, or like the locals, on our newly acquired bicycles, exploring different neighborhoods, taking in the colorful Victorian houses, eating at different restaurants and drinking a lot of Blue Bottle coffee. We got use to the homeless people pitching their tents across the street from our apartment in the Mission District, the weirdos muttering to themselves on the tram, and the old naked guy walking down 18th street with nothing but a sock covering his junk. We drank strong cocktails at our neighborhood dives and ordered take-out way too often using the Caviar app. We hiked from Crissy Field to the Ferry Building and drove to Oakland for authentic-ish Malaysian food.

When we weren’t looking, the city became our new treasured friend.

And as hard as it was leaving our friends in Cambridge, it was just as hard to say goodbye to the city that embraced us. Despite having grown up moving from city to city, it never gets easier - packing your bags when it just starts feeling like home. I will always miss the different places I’ve called home.

Didn’t you want to stay in San Francisco? 

It’s complicated. I knew our time in SF was finite, so we made the most of it as long as we could, living each day like extended tourists. If we were longer term residents, we would have had the luxury of taking the city for granted. Instead, we fell fast and we fall hard, like any whirlwind romance. Now, we wear rose colored lenses when we reminisce about our life there.

Back in K.L, I’ve been on a hosting frenzy, reconnecting with old friends. My husband says I’m making up for lost time, cooking up feasts for the groups of friends we didn’t have in SF. As an introverted extrovert, I sometimes crave the company of people and that achy feeling in your stomach when you’re laughing so hard at a shared joke that you can’t breath. We wanted to stay, but we also knew it would’ve decayed our experience, like getting a toothache when you overdose on a sugary treat.

Has it been hard adjusting back to life in K.L? 

There were moments in the latter part of 2016 when I thought hurling myself into oncoming traffic would be preferable to showing up at work. But i’m trying a different tact this year, and staying positive, as a means to survive.

My husband is still trying to find his way back into the rat race, which has been an exercise in patience (me) and perseverance (him). But seeing my favorite people on a whim over a drink or meal, picking out new houseplants for our home, discovering new restaurants and cafes that have sprouted up and spending time with family are reminders that this is where we belong.

This city and our people that will always welcome us with open arms, no matter how long we’ve been away, where we’ve been and where else we’ve loved.