Madness! I do not believe I am still packing! (Neither can my parents, for that matter, but don’t tell them that.) Why didn’t I finish earlier? Stupid, stupid, stupid. My eyes are bleached out from lack of sleep for days, just chatting up old friends and doing silly things like reading comics I won’t get to touch for two whole years.
Maybe not so silly after all.
I need this. This is my way of saying Goodbye. I’ve spent a week on a road trip across Malaysia, meeting as many friends as possible before leaving.
Now it’s time for my dearest friends of all: my room and my treasures.
This is what I’m really giving up. My family and friends stay with me, I hope, for the entire journey, however they may change. I am just worried I may change so much so that these material things may not mean that much to me anymore. I have faith with people, but not possessions.
So I caress my books, my comics, my CDs while I still can, and press them like fresh flowers into my memory.
.
.
Copyright © 2001 Kenny Mah Ying Fye. Image from Last Orders by Graham Swift.
Kenny Mah believes in the good in people. He has been blogging for over ten years. No, his hands aren't tired. Yet.
Schlecht seh ich aus?
I remember that I did not feel in the least bit excited, which many thought odd at the time. Here I was, about to leave for Germany, for Europe, for a good long time, and I was more absorbed in tabulating the contents of my room, my possessions, than a pleasing contemplation of, of what?
There was no excitement; in truth, only relief. To leave this place, and all my failures and my doomed affairs, that was the main thing. How was I to know life just repeats itself, that I couldn’t erase or run away? I want to tell that kid, on the eve of his departure, not to get his hopes up high, but where’s the point in that? That’s the year he’d have to lead, the lessons he would learn.
Though I’m not altogether sure he did.
OMG… on September 2, 2001 I didn’t even know blog existed or that people had started blogging around that year. :))
This is very cool
@Rad: My favourite writer Neil Gaiman start blogging even earlier, around February 2001, I believe. It’s been 10 years – crazy when I think about it.
I’ve been thinking about how alien internet was to me. I did have access to internet at home back then but all I knew was looking at websites. I didn’t even know I could have my own website :))
You certainly had a more advanced life back then. Well, I came from a small town :))
@Rad: Nah, it’s not that, really. It was more about being thrown into a new environment and needing to get in touch with my family and friends in Malaysia while I was studying in Germany… later the friends I made in Germany read my blog to keep track of the adventures (or shall I say, misadventures) we had… and the rest, well, is history as they say.