Lest I forget

These days my memory is lapsing and I fear that soon it will be gone. I feel that i remember all the good times I had had, but few of the pain I endured.

Three decades ago, I ventured out for the first time to seek knowledge to faraway land of the white men. Visiting Singapore before and after it left Malaysia, or to Thailand do not count. This is really, really far away. I left Malaysia at the prime age of 22 to further my studies after a first degree at University of Malaya. My first long haul flight that made funny stops. I remember my flight first went down to Singapore, then caught another flight to Bangkok, then from Bangkok change the flight and aircraft to Bombay then to Paris, then landed at Heathrow. Today nobody would want to take such long winded flights anymore.

One incident that I still remember is that we almost got lost at Charles de Gaul's airport. We could not speak french and nobody could understand us. Well, got onto the right plane of course with minutes to spare. Remember we had to run on the tarmac to board the plane.

I think we arrived in late fall/autumn and the weather was chilly, yet we did not have enough warm clothes on us. I only had a light jacket on. My friend's friend came to meet us at the airport and we took buses to his place for the night. We were not met by any of the MSD people since we were post graduate students and i was not financed by the government. The wind, it was the bone chilling kind that I ever experienced. After we arrived, this friend took us to Mark & Spencer to buy us some warm coats. But i think it was a little too late as I was shivering uncontrollably. I could not sleep on the cold carpeted floor and I was sure the friend did not have the heater on since, to them the temperature did not call for the money eating machine to heat the house.

The very next day we took the tube to go to MSD to register or to let them know that we have arrived. i don't think they cared about me, but they had to register my friend who was a JPA scholar. That was how we were treated at MSD. Since school or university did not start until the coming week, we went shopping buying warm clothes. I was so grateful that a cousin of mind stuck a roll of pound sterling inside my pocket at the airport in Malaysia. The money that JPA provided for their students was so meager that one could only buy a not so warm coat. However i think post graduate students got more allowance than the undergraduates.

For the orientation week I stayed at the university hall of residence, but discovered i was paying double the local students and there was not many choice of food for me to eat except the potatoes. So, immediately after the orientation, i went looking for a flat. A friend and i decided to stay together at least for the first term. So, we went every where to look for a small flat. On our first trip by ourselves, on the bus using the bus routes and the London A_Z we visited so many houses. We decided to take up a flat near Finsbury park near the Grayhound racing stadium.

Some thing unpleasant happened when we were on and off the buses. My friend left her bag containing all her documents in one of the buses. So we got on a bus and told the driver our sad story and to our utter disbelieve, this bus driver took us from one bus depo to another. There were just the two of us and driver of the red double decker criss crossing London. We then found the bag at the last depo. We thanked the driver and the whole bus people for their kindness.
sambung later