Having been overseas for about three months and a half now, I've become accustomed to living in these parts. The irreverent behaviour of the youths, the dry witticisms of the bus drivers, the dust in the air that swipes your face as you trudge down the windswept dusty streets all over London, the choking cigarette smoke that overwhelms as you meander into a group of locals lighting up, all these form a picture of London that you can never gleam from a picture. The living, breathing soul that defines the place, the cacophonic chorus of ambient noises that enmesh into a miasma we often call culture, and yet struggle to define when presented with the straightforward query "What is London like?"
I can't define London for you, because I have come to know it too well, and hence my impression of the city has long surpassed me being able to cage it into mere words, into that grammatical structure we call a paragraph, because mere words will never satisfactorily encompass everything I've come to know and love about this place.
I can't find the words to define the bustling crowds pushing their way through to catch the morning trains in the Tube, I can't find the expression to show you how I feel when I see Westminster from yet another angle and realise that this was the very same thing I used to see in postcards, I can't find the correct phrase to tell you about why is it that this place is hardly the prettiest, or the cleanest, with weather more unpredictable than a woman's moods, and yet it endears so much that when you leave it, you find yourself wondering when you'll be back.
I am in that uncomfortable place where I can no longer be a mere tourist, and yet I know that this place is merely be a stopover, a station along a railway line, one of many that I will eventually traverse in the continuous track that is my life. I know my fate is not twinned with that of the city dwellers, who hurry along to an unseen destination, the events of tomorrow already on their minds, those of yesterday long forgotten. I know that someday I will have to go home, but no matter what, a part of me can never return, because it has long been stolen by this place.
And I look back at the raw 22 year old I once was, the starry eyed traveller who uprooted himself from the comforts of home and flew halfway across the world, carrying 3 full bags and a heart full of trepidation into the unknown, and I remember how hard the first week was when I couldn't settle into my hostel because someone was holding my keys, forcing me to spend my first night in an utterly foreign land 6000 miles away on a mattress with a plastic wrapper for a bedsheet, unable to tell anybody about the abject loneliness, the fatigue setting in as the 8 hour time difference began to tell, and the ridiculous cold that had me jumping even as I stood outside the hall waiting for the electronic door to open.
I will never forget the first day, the 17th of January, because it was the longest day of my life. I remember stepping off the plane having endured a 14 hour flight, only to realise that it was merely 6am and the day was just beginning. I remember how I had no internet connection for a week, so the only human interaction I had was restricted to short phone calls, knowing full well that I had to try to say as much as I could in the shortest time possible because I was racking up one heck of a phone bill, the feeling of frustration I had every time I finally put down the phone and realised I still had a lot to say, but I couldn't call again because it wasn't worth enough to call for.
And I realise how much I have grown in just these 3 months. I have seen all manner of places and things, and I can no longer go back to being that same boy that I was when I left for this place. A boy I was, wet around the ears, believing that I knew all about the world, when I knew next to nothing. I thought my education had prepared me for everything, but when I came out here, I saw that the biggest lessons in life will always be learned outside of a classroom, because life itself is a teacher borne of the school of hard knocks. Looking back at the things my life used to revolve around, I now feel a tinge of warmth flushing around the edges of my ears at my silliness, because suddenly, the very same things have ceased to matter.
And I am suddenly jarred out of my pensive mood, as the cold night wind starts to blow again, filtering in through my window into the hall room where it is just me, with a laptop, and a guitar for company. It settles around my legs and whips sharply around them, drawing a quickly muttered grumble from me about how cold it is yet again. I hear the laughter from downstairs of two drunk girls stumbling across the well worn mud path towards their flats, joined soon after by the inevitable bunch of drunk guys. And I brace myself for yet another night of noise from rowdy youths well beyond my normal bedtime, often followed by a bunch of them bundling into my flat and slamming doors so hard my door rattles in its frame.
But through it all, I know I will miss everything about this experience when I'm finally home.
I can't define London for you, because I have come to know it too well, and hence my impression of the city has long surpassed me being able to cage it into mere words, into that grammatical structure we call a paragraph, because mere words will never satisfactorily encompass everything I've come to know and love about this place.
I can't find the words to define the bustling crowds pushing their way through to catch the morning trains in the Tube, I can't find the expression to show you how I feel when I see Westminster from yet another angle and realise that this was the very same thing I used to see in postcards, I can't find the correct phrase to tell you about why is it that this place is hardly the prettiest, or the cleanest, with weather more unpredictable than a woman's moods, and yet it endears so much that when you leave it, you find yourself wondering when you'll be back.
I am in that uncomfortable place where I can no longer be a mere tourist, and yet I know that this place is merely be a stopover, a station along a railway line, one of many that I will eventually traverse in the continuous track that is my life. I know my fate is not twinned with that of the city dwellers, who hurry along to an unseen destination, the events of tomorrow already on their minds, those of yesterday long forgotten. I know that someday I will have to go home, but no matter what, a part of me can never return, because it has long been stolen by this place.
And I look back at the raw 22 year old I once was, the starry eyed traveller who uprooted himself from the comforts of home and flew halfway across the world, carrying 3 full bags and a heart full of trepidation into the unknown, and I remember how hard the first week was when I couldn't settle into my hostel because someone was holding my keys, forcing me to spend my first night in an utterly foreign land 6000 miles away on a mattress with a plastic wrapper for a bedsheet, unable to tell anybody about the abject loneliness, the fatigue setting in as the 8 hour time difference began to tell, and the ridiculous cold that had me jumping even as I stood outside the hall waiting for the electronic door to open.
I will never forget the first day, the 17th of January, because it was the longest day of my life. I remember stepping off the plane having endured a 14 hour flight, only to realise that it was merely 6am and the day was just beginning. I remember how I had no internet connection for a week, so the only human interaction I had was restricted to short phone calls, knowing full well that I had to try to say as much as I could in the shortest time possible because I was racking up one heck of a phone bill, the feeling of frustration I had every time I finally put down the phone and realised I still had a lot to say, but I couldn't call again because it wasn't worth enough to call for.
And I realise how much I have grown in just these 3 months. I have seen all manner of places and things, and I can no longer go back to being that same boy that I was when I left for this place. A boy I was, wet around the ears, believing that I knew all about the world, when I knew next to nothing. I thought my education had prepared me for everything, but when I came out here, I saw that the biggest lessons in life will always be learned outside of a classroom, because life itself is a teacher borne of the school of hard knocks. Looking back at the things my life used to revolve around, I now feel a tinge of warmth flushing around the edges of my ears at my silliness, because suddenly, the very same things have ceased to matter.
And I am suddenly jarred out of my pensive mood, as the cold night wind starts to blow again, filtering in through my window into the hall room where it is just me, with a laptop, and a guitar for company. It settles around my legs and whips sharply around them, drawing a quickly muttered grumble from me about how cold it is yet again. I hear the laughter from downstairs of two drunk girls stumbling across the well worn mud path towards their flats, joined soon after by the inevitable bunch of drunk guys. And I brace myself for yet another night of noise from rowdy youths well beyond my normal bedtime, often followed by a bunch of them bundling into my flat and slamming doors so hard my door rattles in its frame.
But through it all, I know I will miss everything about this experience when I'm finally home.