Questa è Enida

I just realized I wrote over-the-counter in the last part of my last post. I actually meant counter service. Over the counter tu bunyik macam nak beli ubat tak yah prescription je! Muahahaha! Tu lah dia kalau dah terover-over nak mengomplen. Over and out!

I was told by a family member the other day that ever since I came back to Malaysia, all I have done is complaining. Uh! I didn’t realize that, quite frankly. I guess she was right. Itu tak kena, ini tak betul…and I have been nothing but too idealistic. My expectations have been unrealistic. Well, not that I am trying to justify it now, but I guess since I am here – home – I have nothing much to miss. Miss, as in long for.

When I was away, I remembered home the way I wanted to. All rosy, all wangi, all bau bunga. So I longed to come home, I missed all the good things about home, and I forgot all the bunga taik ayam that came in the package. (By the way, my brother-in-law, Neil, educated me that bunga taik ayam’s real name is Lantana when I saw plenty of them in Atlanta and called them Chicken-Poop Flowers. Lantana is a nice name, eh?)

And so I kicked and screamed and complained. And in the same time I tried hard to change things around here. Perhaps because I have seen better things out there and I wanted the best for my home. And perhaps I tried too hard, pushed too strong. I wanted people to look at things the way I see things, I guess. Not that I haven’t been tactful in doing what I did, though. I concsiously tried to be very tactful. I bit around the bush, I asked those ‘mukadimah’ questions, I tried to be pleasing.

Nevertheless, I have come to a painful realization that I am different. I do things differently and I think things through differently. Does that make me less Malaysian? I don’t think so. But Malaysians do things…again, differently. Just because I am home I cannot expect that I can come in without knocking on the door and saying a brief hello or salam and having a small talk at the door and waiting for an invitation to come in. I can NOT.

I am, by all means, an insider who had taken herself outside for years and taken herself back home. But no matter how ‘inside’ I think I am, those years have turned me into an outside insider. It’s okay to stand outside the window looking in, the people inside know me and recognize me as one of them. But I am not allowed to come in.

Maybe not now. Maybe not yet. Maybe not at all. Time will tell.