Turning 2.0 Season 2 : Chapter 2 A Thousand Miles (Vanessa Carlton)

Previously:
Three months in Shah Alam, Selangor changed my perspective of life for good. I learnt to adapt to my past and have a fresh new begining. By October 2005, I have already arrived in Tokyo, Japan. Little did I know, language barrier would be the least of my problems.


31st August 2006

“The truth can become a lie in a matter of seconds. When that happens and your whole world comes crashing down, what do you do? Do you accept the new truth and try and adjust your life to the new information that you just found out? Or do you simply discard the new piece of information and pretend like nothing ever happened? Either way, life will never be the same again”

Oh my god. A year has passed since I flew to Tokyo. It’s hard to believe. I still remember that day before flying to Tokyo, my brother cried under the blanket. When I asked him why was he crying, he said he didn’t want me to leave. That broke my heart. But no, I must not show my sadness in front of him. Instead, I smiled and said that everything was going to be fine. Couldn’t bare the fact that I was going to start a new life soon, in a foreign country, I sneaked to the bathroom and cried. That was my first tears in many years (fine, many months. What can I say? I am an extra sensitive guy). And the waterworks didn’t stop there. Even as my mum bid her farewell at the airport, she cried. I however, held back the tears. I knew this was all for a cause.

It was, however, not long before I cry again. After arriving at my hostel, I sat at my bed and thought to myself, “Gosh, Japanese do have small rooms”. After that I decided to take out my things and start to settle in. That was when I found this little note that my brother and sister wrote. It says in Sarawakian Malay “ Naza, kamek sayang kitak” which meant “Naza, we love you”. I don’t know how many guys could actually not cry when they read that but I know one thing for sure though. I cried, again. (Sigh, I need to get myself a tissue. I am evolving into a crying baby. Ooh I just realized if I were to be a baby, I get to wear diapers again. Imagine the joy of not having to go to the toilet. That I could actually sit and chat with m friends for hours and not have to say 'BRB. Toilet Break'. Hehe...I am getting way too sidetracked here. Back to the story. I was speaking of tears. Owh that's right. I cried after reading the little note my bro and sis gave me) But these tears were not tears of pain. Instead, they were tears of joy. The joy of knowing someone loves you and that gave me the strength to go on.

Within a year, I learnt a lot of new things about myself. First, I am competitive. For goodness sake, I used to compete who can open his door faster with Ihsan every time we arrive in front of our rooms ( we live next door to each other). But this competitiveness helped me a lot. Imagine having to compete with smart ass Chinese from mainland China whose brains have been programmed to eliminate any competition possible. If I were not competitive, I would have been blown into pieces by this human droids many months ago. The second thing I learnt about myself was I held too much inside of me. Yes, I was becoming more comfortable with my past but because I was too comfortable with it, I began to think about it a lot. I began to play The Whose Fault Was It game with myself every night before I go to bed. But thank god, with passing time, I was distracted enough with the piles of work that I was no longer thinking about them.

The one thing that I could not forget though was who my real father was. I don’t really have much memory when it comes to him. In fact, the only memory I had of him was the time when he, my mum and I went to this mall. I saw this game console that I really loved. The next thing I know, I was in a car playing it. That was when my father and my mother told me to never tell my grandfather who bought it for me. If I am not mistaken, they asked me to lie that it was given by my father’s friend. To be honest with you, I didn’t understand it then and I still don’t understand it now. But somehow that was the only memory I had. And that was the only memory I lived with.

But thank god for my friends, I wasn’t left to drown in those thoughts. There was always someone to talk to. Ihsan, Iman, Nor and I would use to go to these 24 hour restaurants that served free flow of drinks and sat there for hours. Our initial intention to go there was to study but to be honest with you, I study more sitting in the toilet then at that restaurant. But we talked about lots of things. We talked about how Nor had this two timing boyfriend that is worthless. And then we talked about how Nor dated this two timing boyfriend that was not worth a mention. And we also talked about how Nor is foolish enough to continously be fooled by this obviously bastard. When we're not talking about tha, we talked about when we would want to get married and stuff. We talked about things that were pure crap. And that by the way, happen to be my forte. I crap very well. And it was all self educated. I didn't need to attend any crappy school to learn that. I am pure crap.

As for my studies, I was doing quite okay actually. I would go out to cafes to study at night for a few hours from time to time. The reason why I cannot study at home was because if I were to be left next to a bed, very soon I will be on that bed, thinking about the past and stuff. It was either that or lying in the bed sleeping. Either way, I could not be productive. But yeah, because of my routine of studying at the café, my results were improving and I was slowly coming close to achieving my goal of entering a university that everyone deemed impossible, especially if you were a student without Chinese Language background. To come to think of it, I am actually learning Chinese while learning Japanese. Cooool. Kiss my ass, Mark. You're no longer the only one that can read few Chinese characters. Now I can read them as well.

Next week
Have you wondered what the tag line is for? What could it be that changed my life for good (or for worse)? It all happened in a span of 30 minutes. Stay tuned for next week's back to back stories. Chapter 3 shall come up on Saturday while Chapter 4 will come up on Sunday.

P/S this story was intensified to make it more melodramatic. I am actually a happy living individual that bounces from wall to wall. This story was shared as a way of accepting all that has happened and find the humor in them. Actually, another minor reason why the story is shared is to function as a way to fill the spaces in my blog. Laugh out loud.