In less than 2 weeks, I'll be on my merry way back to Malaysia for Christmas and New Years. In a way, this had to be done, not because there is a particular someone back home whom I've had a long distance relationship with for the past 8 months, but because for future we're working hard for, there are some loose ends I need to tie up at the same time.

Come to think of it, despite being in Australia for the past 5 years, it's been about 3 years since I've last step foot in my home country. In way I both dread it and welcome it at the same time. I dread the limitations and rules I have to abide to after being so used to the freedom I've had as a guest in Australia. Yet I welcome the familiar rock which I grew up in, the world that helped shaped who I am, not to mention generously greeting (and shoveling) the food which I've missed since leaving.

It's not to say as well, that I've become an alien to where I grew up. You can't become something you already were to begin with. The Malaysian culture has far been one I've never been used to. Despite being raised by it, I've always found it unwelcoming and difficult. Which is why I am the child without a cultural heritage. I'm as alien to the people of my own country and they are to me. While I can blend in for the sake of appearance. There is so much I can pretend to be without completely botching it up and looking like a complete tool. I know it. People know it.

But I am going back nevertheless. Love it or hate it, it's a world I cannot deny. After all, while some of us may be born or raised in the wrong country, it doesn't make it any less real. We all have to return from whence we came from, if only to start saying goodbye to it and building something else, somewhere else, that you can finally call home.