I grew up in Malaysia, read Law (and some History) at university in England, spent a handful of seasons in Latin America, returned to Malaysia, and more recently began an acquaintance with Germany. These days, you’ll find me mostly in Berlin and sometimes in Kuala Lumpur. I remain ever curious about all the places I’ve never been.
But I’ve realised: Even as other places better express my desires, Malaysia remains my emotional anchor, even when I resist it, when I want to get away. You know that opening scene from Gone Baby Gone? Something about how it’s the things you don’t choose that make you who you are? I realise: my restlessness has never been about finding somewhere ‘better’ to be, but simply about experiencing a different place for a time.
Before I ever traversed physical distances, though, I wandered even further between the pages of books: The Call of the Wild, Moby Dick, The Secret Garden, Great Expectations, The Hound of the Baskervilles… and through the soundscapes of the Mandarin-language audio tapes of spooky Chinese fairytales my mum got me, which I would listen to at bedtime with the covers pulled over my head. How could a child raised on such vicarious adventures not grow up with a deep, abiding longing to be out in the world?
Mother tongues, adopted tongues
Like many Malaysians of Chinese descent whose families have lived in Malaysia since the early twentieth century, English is my first language—in that it’s the one I’m most proficient in, my parents’ generation having been shaped by British colonisation and all that.
I studied at a Chinese-language primary school and grew up learning Mandarin, Malay, and English, with Mandarin as the main language of instruction (all non-language subjects were taught in Mandarin). Following that, I enrolled in a secondary school where Malay was the primary medium of instruction, then headed abroad to university in England, where English was the medium of instruction.
Throughout these years, I read mainly English-language texts and watched English-language movies (more American than British, such was the power of American global hegemony), which explains my dominant mastery of the language. But I was always navigating the real world—that is, the immediate world and the people around me—in a multitude of tongues: it’s the charmed inheritance of every Malaysian. Though I don’t, at least at this point, see myself ever writing professionally in any language other than English, I am deeply apprecative of how being Malaysian acculturates one to navigate multiple languages simultaneously, even if in a hodgepodge manner, and how it has helped me ease my way into different geographical and cultural contexts, which has been helpful on both a personal and professional level.
I also speak Spanish, though not as fluently as I once did, and I’m currently taking B1-level German, and hope to achieve at least B2 level.
Joy is not a crumb
When I’m not writing or reading at my desk or at a cafe, I like to walk and wander the city and eavesdrop on strangers’ conversations, picnic and play boardgames at a park, lose myself in a movie at some quaint cinema, sit in and listen to the exchange of ideas at literary and storytelling events, partake in communal eating experiences and exploring what’s new in vegan food possibilities, swing dance in some tavernous bar or vintage ballhaus, and travel somewhere I love or haven’t been. Some of these things still apply when I’m back in Kuala Lumpur with my family—but I would also be going on walks and cuddling with our two family dogs, whom I miss dearly 🩵