London is only temporary...

What can I say?

After nearly two months being here, I would say that I've achieved that I wanted to be when we came here.

Yes, wanted to BE.

For those of you who do not know, let me give you a background of us of where we came from.

We came from a very comfortable life with a promising job. We'll wear powersuits to work, walk the executive walk and talk the executive talk. A daily life would consist of waking up to get ready for work, wearing my black coat and my trademark 4-inch "dont-mess-with-me" black pumps (almost as if its my "mask" for the day), stroll to the office 20 mins later than 9am and sit down at my desk to start work. Oh yea, right before that, I would have made a compulsory stopover at the canteen to "tapau" a Milo O Ais as breakfast, but will be on my desk probably the whole day, much to the disgust of some of my colleague :P

My life uphill pretty much revolves around the weekly schedule, we call it Group A,B,C and D. Hence, my lunch date also revolves around that time too. Come Group A would see me at my worst, and I'll be moping around and staying back in the office for the longest time. Group B & C will see me having lunch the exec way, it would usually be at a chinese restaurant eating dim sum or 3 course meal (with dessert no less), sometime it would be buffet (but on rare occasions) and there are a couple of time when we could squeeze in a lobster meal as well. Come D group, you'll most probably find me in the canteen with my colleagues having a few of my regulars; mix pork porridge or white rice with char siu, pan mee, tom yam lousu fan to name a few.

When the day is over, I'll return to my room and watch tv to past time until its time for dinner. At11pm. Yeap, I have no life up there and my dinner is usually 11pm. The thing is, unlike life in the city where everyone spends an average of 2 hours commuting back to and from work, it takes us less than 10 mins. Hence, we have loads of time to kill, and usually I'll sneak in a nap to wake up at 10pm to get ready for dinner, or supper, whatever you call it.

Why am I doing this? Why am I documenting my life back home when I choose to drop everything that I've know to be so comfortable and be here?

I'll show you what life here is about and you'll see...

I'll wake up in the morning to go work in my casual clothes, which usually consist of jeans and a t-shirt. Oh yea, and sports shoes too. Those who know me back home knows that I have loads and loads of shoes but NEVER a pair of sports shoes. Yeap, so difference #1 Sport shoes. Why sport shoes? Cause I have to walk to take a bus and hop on two trains to get to work, which will take me roughly 1 1/4 hours. I havent found a pair that entices me to wear, and the price too (refer below about money) and I dont see the idea of wearing a pair of black pointy heels when I'm gonna be dressed casually anyway.

Luckily, the fashion here is high heels as well and I've come across many black pumps that could very well cured my yearning for my black pumps, but Issue #2 stood in the way. Money. Yeap, back home, we've develop a VERY BAD habit of not looking at the price tag of everything that we eat/buy. Bags/shoes? Buy lah, credit card will solve the problem. Lobster for lunch? Just sign our allowance away. Extra live prawns for the steamboat, just order. Money was not a problem back home, and with such an extravagent lifestyle (For two person, lunch could be 80++, dinner could be 200++, On.A.Daily.Basis), its certainly an eye opening experience when you only earn 5 per hour. I couldnt afford the £10 even if I want to. Lunch for £80? you must be joking. I couldnt even part with £10! Forget about lobster. Well, actually we DID have lobster for dinner once, and the succulent meat just transport me back miles and miles back to the hill.

Issue #3 was our pride. We were so sure of our job back home that many a time I feel that we're at the peak of our learning curve when we should still be learning. Things up the hill is pretty messed up and its not your usual company. Believe it or not, it has come to a point where I'll pick up the phone and will be able to solve your problem no matter what. Regardless of whether I'm able to give you a proper step by step on what to do, or be able to pin point you to the correct person that will be able to assist you, nothing challenges me anymore. And of course, regretfully, the company is grooming me to head a direction that I've repeatedly voice out my concerns. I feel at that time, its not about me to take up the challenge, but rather, they couldnt find anyone better, so they just shove me with it. (Hey, isnt this the story of our life???).

Anyway, back to point 3. We were at a position where we wouldnt have any trouble getting any other job. Imagine our dissapointment, and very much our shame, when we couldnt get any when we're here! I went to some employment agency and did some test on Excel/Word. Believe it or not, all they test me was "How to open a document?" and "How to you add B2 and C2?" and when I'm done, you know what they say? "Wow, your test results are very good!". Unfortunately, this is not a good news. Because apparently, even though you excel in the tests, we still have problems securing a job. For reasons that are clear to you, I also want to add that currently they are also having recession, which makes job even harder to get. More people hunting for lesser job? Gettit?

So imagine what our ego must have felt like when we, the high flying exec, couldnt even get a job as a Office Clerk or Receptionist! WTF? If you only expect your receptionist to only know how to open and save and document, shouldt I who know how to turn your excel report into a fantastic presentation should be more qualified? Overqualified you say? No, there is a much more sinister reason behind it. However funny it is, this is exactly what I was looking for. I was hoping for this experience which will humble us and send us back straight to earth. Life in the hill was very, VERY exclusive, and nothing would prepare us for the life in KL. Hence, hopefully with this experience, we'll be heading back KL with a better preparation for the difficult life ahead.

So will we decide to stay for good? Apparently, 80% of the immigrant who comes to UK only want to work with the ultimate goal of returning to home one day. Loads of our friends says that they envy us when we told them we're here. But seriously, if you only know about their parking rules and the rubbish bin fine, you WILL be VERY GLAD about what we have back home.

The grass is always greener on the other side. Seriously.

If you ask me what is things that I hope to see changed back home compare to here, I would only have ONE thing in mind. Despite the fact that their transportation system is good, their human rights/discrimination is in place *roll eyes*, their infrastructure is beautiful, I could only say, the weather here is nice. Other than that, be VERY grateful about your car, about our shopping mall, about our mamak and our steamboat and pasarmalam. Oh, about the preferred race, forget about it. We're definately more tolerance type, and we all ARE living in harmony. Wait until you read what is reported in the newspaper here.

I have decided that no matter what, I am NOT going to raise my child here. The better way to teach your kid about life and discrimination is to bring them up in a place that TOLERATES it. Rather than a place that thinks there are non when it is right smack at your face. *roll eye again*.

Perhaps, I strongly suspect that it is purely based on cultural different. When a friend tells me to "embrace their culture", I shot back by saying, I'm here to only EXPERIENCE their culture, I have absolutely no plans to "embrace" it as I will be returning home. Can you imagine the difficulty I'm gonna have if I "embrace" the culture here and goes back home just to be "culture-ly shocked" again? Hmm.. I wander if I'll go back and start complaining about having to declare my age in my CV?

The point is, I hope to leave this place with 101 stories about life here and ultimately be very glad about the things we have back home. I'll recommend this to anyone who wants to take a punch into their ego and not let excuses dictate their life. I used to be one of those who said, "I have so much commitment that I cant just leave", or "I cannot imagine life without a job and no money coming in", or "I've got bills/commitment/responsibilities" people. Its funny how they think that WE dont seem to have any. We dont have a mortgage to pay off, we dont have a car to pay off, we dont have insurance to pay off, we dont have responsibilities, we dont have to think about money to spend on our wedding ceremony, we dont have to think about securing a life and building a family, we dont have to worry about money to raise a kid, we dont have to think about starting all over when we come back to KL at 30, we dont have anything to worry about!

At the end of the day, if things dont work out, we can always go back and say we've been there and done that. No harm done (yea right, funny how I'm saying it when I just when balistic last week about not securing a job). I guess instead of giving advise out to people who got stuck in a boring but secured life and choose to do nothing but complains about it, instead of saying "i know that saying is easier than done", we can finally say, "Look, I've done it!".

Wait till I tell you about Curry being the British food!