I will live in one of these houses, one day. It’s a fact. No matter how many years it takes me to crawl my way up to the top of whatever business I work in, I will live in a Kensington town house. It’s been my dream for too many years now for me to let it go to waste!

Anyway, (grudgingly) back to reality. It’s been such a strange few days. I’m back at University but not back to classes, and I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have much to do (besides work) but I’m really homesick. I miss home comforts, as usual, but I miss the people too. I don’t feel like I had enough time with them, especially since I spent most of the summer holiday away from home. I always thought that home life was too stressful and restrictive, but suddenly I would trade my life here just to go back. Yes, parents may be annoying, but I really miss that life at the moment. I’m 200+ miles away. And it sucks. I know I should be grateful to be able to go to this Uni, and uni in general, but homesickness is such a miserable thing, and when you feel isolated from everyone who cares about you it’s even worse. But I know I can’t quit, I’ve come this far (pun intended) :p

So in order to keep positive, I’m making life plans. Thinking about what I’ll be like and where I’ll be living and working when I’m back home in London in around 18 months time. It will probably be a long time before any of this comes true, but like my dad used to say to me, nothing worth having is ever easy. It still seems so strange to think about how quickly things change. I mean two years ago I was at home, wishing my life away so I could go off to Uni, and now I can’t wait to get back home to live the glitzy London lifestyle. How did I forget all of that? I guess over the Xmas break I remembered how much I love London, even though it can be annoying at times, and especially the friends and family there that make it so special. I can’t wait for my friends to get back from Uni so we can be in each others’ lives regularly again, and I don’t have to wait for a time we’re all free to call them, or skype them, or wait for a text reply, or get us all to meet up (a very difficult task!). Don’t get me wrong, I love the friends I’ve made here, and I hope to keep in touch with them, but I guess I’m more of a homebird than I previously thought.

That being said, my future plans involve lots of trips. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, New York and Boston again…I just hope someday (hopefully far in the future) I can look back on my life and pinpoint all these achievements and amazing moments and just be happy that I’ve done the things I wanted to do, and made the most of life. But at the moment I’m just going to try to enjoy the ride!

As I’ve said before, since going off to University I’d like to think of myself as a much more confident and adventurous person, even though my mother is still content to view me as a child– something which I doubt is likely to change any time soon. But while my mother is very shy socially, and, might I add, keen to pick holes in anything I say, do or indeed wear, our family friends the Mirs are keen only to enjoy life and provoke laughter. An excellent way to be, in my opinion. Within minutes of walking into their warm house, I realised that this must be what it’s like to have a large, close-knit family around you, something that I have never experienced as an only child. Conversation never dried up throughout the entire evening, and I don’t think I have laughed as much in one evening for many months, even though the majority of the group were women twice my age. Particular highlights were my aunt’s best friend Bina constantly being on the prowl for food, especially sweets; her sister Sadia chatting up a random man who was on a Lads Night out on the tube, and of course, Cathy’s choice of a veritable feast of Malaysian food at the restaurant. It was one of those occasions where you order a lot of small dishes and everyone takes what they want, and to my mum and aunt’s surprise I was happy to try anything and everything. I felt glad to be sitting next to Cathy, who, as a native Malaysian herself, was happy to explain to me the ingredients of every dish, how to cook them, and the price of such foods in her home country. I was shocked, for instance, to learn that this amazing fried bread and dipping sauce would have been about 20p back in Malaysia (best dish of the night, for me). Somehow I picked the best dishes straight away, and it was only when I had my third helping of this particular dish that was Cathy’s favourite as well, that she informed me that I had been eating tofu. Well, that’s a new one to tick off my list. I also ate lots of beef, which if you know me in real life is quite strange for me to do. All in all, a great meal– though sadly they ran out of the coconut pancakes so we had to have Cadbury’s Roses for dessert. Lucky that Bina had put about three handfuls of them in her handbag! Most embarrassing moment of the night was when the ladies wanted to order a Singapore Sling cocktail, and my mum said to the whole table that I should get one because ‘I drink any old concoction’ now I’m at uni. I just calmly replied that I didn’t drink with food, and enjoyed my sparkling water and some Chinese tea. Some people, haha.

On to the show itself. I won’t give too much away, in case you haven’t seen it, but I was looking forward to the performance of this song I already knew from the show, ‘Defying Gravity’, and it did not disappoint. I literally got goosebumps, it was such an epic moment. I have the song on my iPod, and my love of it was one of the main reasons I’ve wanted to see the show, and to see it performed on stage in front of me by a really amazing Elphaba was almost enough to move me to tears. Call me sentimental, but I think anyone who really loves that show knows it is mainly because you empathise with Elphaba– feeling as though you are somehow different and don’t quite fit in, whether at school or elsewhere. And this is her crowning moment, when she decides that she is going to be strong and not rely on anyone else, just be content to do what she wants and to hell with anyone else. Absolutely amazing, well done Rachel Tucker. I also loved how the show tied in with the actual Wizard of Oz, which I wasn’t expecting, and the ending…just, yay!

All in all, 5/5, brilliant night. And remember, ‘everyone deserves a chance to fly’ like Elphaba x

I tear my room apart in
search of you: determined
to catch a glimpse, so that
I will not forget. I made you
a promise, made a pact with myself
a long time ago, to keep you
alive by remembering. I cannot
allow you to disappear now.
The print is fading, image is blurry…
At times I imagined that you would
dissolve in my tears. But I will never
let you be gone completely, let you
float away into the air.

And so I face an agonising problem. How do you get in contact with a the person you most want to speak to, when they haven’t even left a breadcrumb for you to follow? It is depressing just thinking about it, considering how close this person and myself used to be– but do you think there is even a chance for a reunion? I know that this person will most likely have moved on with his life, and be as different now as I am, since we first met 3 years ago. Despite it all, he has every right to be angry with me for not keeping up our correspondence. All I can say is that I was young and foolish. I had stupid, idealistic views of what the world– and people in general– should be like, and thank God I have since learned to compromise. Most importantly, I have learned that no one is perfect. Far from it.

I have to admit that I hope, with this blog being public again, he will read this and know that I feel stupid for not replying to his emails, and that I would love him to get back in touch. And that’s the most I can do, now. I’m sure some readers will think this is a load of sentimental tripe, but for anyone who has doubts about whether they should be with someone, I would say to avoid cutting them out of your life completely. Especially if you are my age You never know, you might live to regret it, and lose someone you’ll later realise was highly important to you.

As always, thanks for reading. x

It’s true the pen is mightier than the
sword and has long been the suppressed
woman’s weapon. Our bodies weak, our
voices unheard in the foolish male world
Until ink grants us expression: determined,
we make a decision. Now we choose not to
mince words or be consigned to write flowery
verses. We lay bare the truth, these lines are
our escape portal and we crucify our captors
Once inferior, no more: now, bowing down, man
must take his place, envious of our poetic skill.