Tempus

Dear Dante,

It has come to my attention that I have spent the bulk of the last decade of my life in London, more so than Shah Alam. This is a testament to the sheer audacity of time, that ten years have passed in the exhale of a breath, without anyone batting an eyelid. How it leaps, how it floats, how it becomes delirious and distorted in hindsight. Did I experience enough? Have I ever paused to fully appreciate the present as it was passing? I'd like to think so. I'd like to believe this digital archive has been a witness to some of it's most prominent moments.

Unquestionably, the design of my life has surpassed my expectations. Without fully realising it, I ended up threading in the paths that led me to live in London; threads that I didn't think would be a definite part, but is now inevitably a large chunk of my identity. An essential core of your personality lies within the crevices of the every day; and my everyday, at least for the past decade, has been spent in this city that I now call home. As the postcodes prove, London is as much a part of me as Shah Alam now. I am the girl that moved and lived abroad. 

There are surely external markers that signifies this shift within me. It's the ease with which I spend without currency conversion, casually contactless, the soft 't's in my 'water' and my 'what's, the smattering of 'cheers' and the 'faff' in conversations, the unquestionable respect for a zebra crossing. I come back to Shah Alam more and more as an intermediate visitor, squeezing in a quick catch up here, or a brief visit there, over the course of a month that I'm able to go home. The landscapes of my childhood become a archaeological site, and I am more aware of how the sun glints differently, how traffic compounds, and how much sugar there is in almost everything. 

Despite (or maybe because of) all this, the beauty of this realisation is that I am more richer with the multitudes of culture within me. It's a privilege to have home on both sides of the globe, and to be an amalgamation of this identity. I've come to appreciate that while internal layers sparks a more interesting personality, being a multi or hyphenated person (in this case, dual destined) on physical terms adds an undeniable perceptional value. I wonder where the next ten years will have me. Wherever I end up, I hope it's with love. 

AD.