Home is Melbourne

Melbourne used to be just a name—it was the name of a city south-east on the Australian map, it was the name that appeared on intervals in the World section of TheStar newspaper, and it was where my university is located at. Back then it was just a name like any other city. Dubai? New York? Vladivostok? London? All evoked nothing, except silhouetted images of a city thousands of kilometres away, immersed with a strained foreignness I’ve yet to unlock. And Melbourne used to be part of that too—this group of foreign cities that scarcely resemble home. It evoked none of the high-rise buildings that populated much of the grid-like city, or the Asians or Africans or Europeans who found their way here and made it their home, or the trams which go through busy streets, a unique characteristic of Melbourne.

I returned from New Zealand three days ago, arrived at the Southern Cross Station at about 10 or 11am, and found myself slipping into my Melburnian life as deft and quickly as slipping on my shoes. I donned this cloak of Melbourne around me, and eased myself into its everyday life—everything seemed as like before: I went to my university’s library to use their high-speed Internet, I cook dinner, I hang out with some of the Walsh St Boys. Granted, the few that I’ve gotten close with—Ethan and Desmond—weren’t there, but otherwise it felt like the good ol’ days. We went out to the Suzuki’s Night Market two nights ago together (me, Ivan, Neil the Canadian, Kelvin, and Kelvin’s girlfriend—we seem to form a different variation of the Walsh St Boys together), and yesterday we even had our first communal cookout since I got back from New Zealand.

Strange though, isn’t it? In all my effort to try to hang on to these few precious moments with the boys, I was dogged by an unrivaled sadness that loomed like a shadow when I was in New Zealand. Perhaps I’ve now graduated from it all, but now that I’m back once again in Melbourne, all those wistful solitary reveries vanished—not forgetting, but merely moved on.

Melbourne feels so much like a home to me. I remembered during my first few weeks here how in my chats with Matt I’ve refused to refer to my exorbitant rented room as a “home”, but a “place”, but now I’m using the H word quite liberally. It’s where I did my growing up—to the extent that a 21-year-old can grow up—and how I learned life experiences and made fast friends that I otherwise wouldn’t have. Subang Jaya would still be my home—it’s just that I found my second home somewhere else too, and that fuzzy feel-good feeling of being back to a familiar place seized hold of me the moment I stepped out of Southern Cross Station into Spencer St, and made that 15-minute walk past Flagstaff Gardens and back to Walsh St where all the familiarity lies.

Some people have remarked, that with my short 6-month stint in Melbourne, I should’ve just done it on my final semester early next year. But, I wouldn’t have met my Walsh St Boys, would I?

I wish I don’t have to leave—that Malaysian auntie I was talking to in Picton, New Zealand, spilled a torrent of Malaysian news I missed out, and I told her, “Now I remember why I don’t read Malaysian news anymore, it’s too depressing”. And it’s true. It was only in Melbourne that I realised how awfully backwards my home country is, how our complacent mentality is keeping us from progressing, how that Vision 2020—of when our country achieves the much-coveted “developed” status—would fail and never arrive. Vision 2200 perhaps. I drew far too many parallels between the differences of living in Melbourne and in Malaysia that it may ruffle a few feathers or annoy some people, but it’s true—the grass on the other side is greener.

But with a month left here, I probably should saviour my second home as much as I can, and spend less time being a workaholic in my room and the library. Now excuse me while I cook with my boys.