Hauptbahnhof seems incredibly sunny and crisp early in the morning. Already there are people around, running from train to train, looking flustered and excited and complacent. Some kids were sleeping under a column, waiting for their train, I suppose.

I remember a night in December last year, in another Hauptbahnhof, where some other kids were in the same postions. Somewhat more posed, if the photos are anything to go by, but the same thing basically.

Just waiting for the world to start up again.

We were trying our best to get to Berlin. (On a single Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, I believe. Eight Deutsch Marks each to the Big Bear. We were cheap.) I wonder if these kids were heading there too?

I’m gonna be travelling again soon myself. This time to a place I’m very familiar with. Or was. It’s been a year after all.

An hour later, and I’m in the computer lab, signing on to my email account. My mailbox’s nearly broken. All these emails, all asking the same question: Are you really going back? What are your plans? And so on.

Yes, I am really going back. No, this is not a joke. Yes, I do know the Malaysians are gonna suffer once more my undesirable presence. The Germans are secretly celebrating but perhaps their joy is too soon.

For I intend to come back. Yes, you heard me right. I am returning. No dumb Ah-nuld impressions here. Just a promise to return. At least for the Oktoberfest. I’m hoping to find some employment till the summer semester next year, and then enroll in something else.

It sounds all so vague and unclear. But then the future’s never clear, is it? Not even a year ago, when I thought that I had everything planned, down to the last detail. I had it made.

Then life happened.

Maria and I had a nice long chat yesterday, over munching Doners. I noticed she had many freckles all over her gently sun-kissed skin; she looked healthy and active, and she was. I am not really sure what I look like now.

I’ve been giving mirrors a miss for quite a while.

I know my hair is longer, longer than it’s ever been before. I know I nearly never have photographs taken when it’s this way, which would explain I forget and let my hair grow again when I reallly shouldn’t.

You can only get a decent haircut by someone who knows how to handle Asian hair, well, in Asia. That’s prolly not true, but it feels true. My hair is thin and soft and black, but not too black. German haridressers don’t know what to make of it. So mostly I don’t let them even try.

Hence this unruly mop.

This sounds narcisstic of me, I know, and perhaps it is even true. But having hair that no one seems to know how to style isn’t the only thing that doesn’t fit.

Maria and I talked about a lot of things, mostly happy, cheerful things. She’s always on the move, especially this year. She’s been to Hong Kong/China, South Africa, and this winter, Brazil. That’s three continents in a year.

In contrast, i haven’t been moving around that much. I always wanted to, or said that I did, but didn’t eventually. I guess it’s cuz I wasn’t moving much inside either. I was stagnant.

I couldn’t move.

I had come to Munich, to Germany, almost a year ago now, with an idea, a belief, of what I wanted for myself. I wanted to get a Masters in Communications Engineering. I wanted to get a job at Siemens. I wanted to be a professional, whatever that means.

I did not really know what that means.

But I do know that, even then, it meant nothing to me.

I’ve made sacrifices. Or things that sounded like sacrifices. I’ve given up a good job at a local partner of IBM, where I had a wonderful manager who sent me for expensive MCSE training without binding me, for this. Such big words, such big ideas.

Again, it meant nothing. I didn’t enjoy myself, no worse, it ate away at me. So that’s hardly a sacrifice.

And to get this job, this MCSE training I didn’t care for, I had to give up a trip with some friends, perhaps not the dearest of friends, but easily the more interesting ones.

See, no matter what Asians may say or profess, we are an uptight species. We live to work and to toil and we desire the beauty and security that only money can buy. For most Chinese people, Wealth, Health and Proseprity aren’t just three separate deities, they’re one and the same.

Hence, having friends who would follow you to Nepal and then Tibet, where the Himalayas and the Buddhist Lamas were, that’s not a run-of-the-mill thing.

But I was fearful. Not of the impending hike and the heights, but of the current depression and the lows. Economically, things weren’t bright. A good Chinese son ought get his priorities straight and get a job first. Get security.

I did that.

It wasn’t hard. I may not be the smartest or most suitable candidate they had, but I can talk my way into anything; I have that at least. I live on words.

And then, the Masters, Munich, came along. An opportunity to escape again, to run away. I took it.

I must sound like a fugitive by now. Sometimes I even agree, whole-heartedly. But I was someone else too. I was proactive, energetic, bustling with ideas and optimism, just wanting to make the most of my youth.

I wanted to create opportunities for myself.

Justin, he was my ex-partner. We used to get into all sorts of hare-brained schemes to earn money and build start-ups and try to get funding for our companies. from what I’ve mentioned above, I must sound utterly caffeinated. I was. I blame Justin.

He used to come over to my house and crash in my room. He drank coffee all the time. So did I inevitably. Our eyes would blur at the screens as we projected the amount of money we would make once our company gets afloat.

Justin quit his job at Intel after six months and now runs his own company. I am in Germany right now, unsure and unemployed.

The night when I made my final decision to come to Germany, he was the first person I phoned. My family, of course, already knew. I wouldn’t have done this without their blessings. But I think, looking back now, their blessings were in fact just what they thought would make me happy and secure and successful. How was they to know I would be wrong?

Justin did not know and he obviously thought that I was wrong, though he didn’t say it. The regret in his voice was almost palpable. This was difficult, cuz he was more enthusiastic about his new desire to go out on his own and be an enterpreneur than ever before. He wanted his old partner to join him.

His old partner just told him he was gonna leave Malaysia for two years, minimum.

Today, he’s still excited about possibilities of working with me again. I am glad for his enthusiasm, but I do not have the faith in myself anymore. I am weary and I need to rest. But I cannot stop. For in doing nothing all this while before, I have been hurting. Badly.

Sometimes the rest you need is in the moving. Being in motion.

I used to think that the greatest lesson that I would learn from this was that nothing is ever solved by running away. Not true, though the lesson is valid.

My greatest lesson learned is that sometimes you can’t avoid having someone hurt. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, someone will get hurt. Everyone, maybe. So, the choice is who do you want to hurt, or not hurt?

I choose not be hurt anymore. I know there are others around me who will be hurt, who are hurt, by this, my family especially, but there it is. Sometimes the villain is the one who’s trying his best to be a hero all the time.

I have given up on trying to make everything all right. It’s just not possible. Many have asked me to make the right decision. Many have told me my decision will affect the rest of my life. I hear you.

But sometimes decisions can’t be made with any surety. You never know how things go in the end. I can only try and hope for the best.

I can only chose, and I have made my choice.

I have chosen to be happy.

.

Copyright © 2002 Kenny Mah Ying Fye.