A lot of things happened in 2010 but I’ll talk about one thing in particular. The most profound thing I’ve experienced being so far away from home was being independent. There was no one to tell me what, how, why, or when to do anything. I was left to my own devices and at the beginning I didn’t feel it because I was carried away by dorm events, university scheduled presentations, orientation, meet n’ greets, and parties. A few weeks pass and what’s left is absolutely nothing except club activities (if you joined any) and classes. Which I promptly attended, punctually and enthusiastically.
Time has a funny way to chip at everything without mercy or judgement, all those people I met the few weeks and months I was in university just seem to drift away. I was never one to start a relationship I had no interest in and clearly the people that I had met had no interest in me. From those frequent messages of meet ups it slowly devolved into those awkward holiday greetings then into nothing. Clearly, I didn’t make much of an impression and the most peculiar thing about it was that I didn’t care. My involvement with society and people became less frequent as the weather got colder and at the beginning of winter in Australia I was completely alone. I ate dinner alone, I went to class alone, I did hobbies that were meant for one, I left the Kendo club, and I stopped participating in any event, party, or gathering. I knew, lying on my bed that if I had succumbed to a sudden heart attack my death would go unnoticed for a good long time. Was I sad? Angry? Depressed? For me at least, I felt nothing; contrary to popular belief the loneliness was none of that, I liked it. Now, I don’t know whether it was my mind denying my sad fact or was it my nature to like the loneliness I don’t know, but what I loved most about being alone was the quiet. It was blissfully quiet and that gave me a lot of time to think.
What did I think about? Well everything, and nothing. The months of loneliness gave me a lot of time to rethink my life, realign my paradigm, and re-evaluate my beliefs. However, as I got more detached from people so did my involvement in university; what I mean is, my grades went to fucking shit. I skipped classes because it was too lazy to get up, I blamed the lecturer for being incompetent, I blamed the tutor for marking my paper and giving me a bad mark, I blamed everything. Being alone, had inflated my arrogance level to over 9000!!! It simultaneously made me ask, “What the Hell is the point?”
At first I had serious doubts about my majoring in accounting and finance then I had doubts about my degree in commerce then I had doubts about my enrolment in the ANU. Finally, I thought to myself, “Why am I here? I don’t want to be a fucking accountant or a corporate cat. I don’t care about money, women, fame, or anything. I should have enrolled in a Malaysian university and save my parents the trouble.” The only thing I could not surrender was the dream. My dream, to become a writer and I didn’t need a fucking degree for that.
What changed? Time, or more precisely, time changed me – once again. It was not God, or a friend, or anybody, it was all me. I woke up one morning and muttered, “I’m such a fucking pussy.” Whatever happened, it happened several weeks before the finals and because I did not fuck up the assignments I managed to pass everything except one paper which I had to take a supplementary exam. In the process I found new respect for the art of accounting and a morbid curiosity for the shrewd practice of finance. After that I didn’t get much alone time, soon after my finals my folks came down and we drove along the south east coastline of Australia for about a month. And after that I had summer classes which took more of my time than I expected and now I’m here. Not totally alone any more because an old friend is now my roommate.
I like to think that I came out of that period of utter silence with something, I can’t be certain that I did, but what is certain is that I enjoyed being alone and though I can’t be alone any more I’d love to do it again maybe in a different city, country, or continent. Right now, I’m busy trying to get out of the mud of the past. This year will be a good year, because I fucking said so.
