I was drying my laundry on the rack near the window; the night was getting late, and the housemates were sleeping. The sounds of the city filled the air and I stood for a moment and just paused. It’s been almost three years of living in the city now, and it’s funny how certain things you just get used to. Every night, at approximately midnight, I can hear the garbage truck announcing its arrival six floors below, in all its noise. Then you have the occasional sound of late-night revellers and drunkards roaming the streets, punctuating the night air with their boorish shouts. The sirens late at night; another fire engine speeding off to the place of need. And instead of seeing greenery when you gaze outside the window, it’s buildings, buildings and more buildings.
Five years ago, if you had thrown me into this city life, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep a wink the entire night, and would probably want out. And it’s funny how things just… change. I remember visiting my aunt’s family in Miri years and years ago, and her house was situated near the road, and oh my goodness, I remembered how I struggled so hard to fall asleep, simply because I could hear the traffic whizzing past every few seconds. And the first time I moved to my current house back in 2000, the call for prayer from the nearby surau used to rouse me from my sleep and annoy me to no end. Of course my body eventually got accustomed to all these sounds. And now that I’m living in the city, it’s easy to forget the quiet, otherwise peaceful nights back home; the city sounds replaced by sounds of the night life in the trees and grasses and ‘jungle’ outside my house. And it’s something that I miss from time to time.
And in recent years, going back home for holidays – there are chickens in my backyard now (don’t even ask), and while I am not awakened by the surau’s loudspeakers anymore, the stupid cock crowing at freaking THREE A.M. in the morning was something I had to get used to.
I’ve gotten used to the city life, even with the sounds of the city at night that cuts through sleep sometimes – the bustling cafe walkway that I love walking through downstairs from my apartment, jostling and walking with what seems like hundreds of other people walking along the streets. Business people walking briskly, students, all sorts of people, of all colours, races, age… Shops and restaurants all around, people coming and going all the time. And I think I’ll actually miss this life, especially when I think of the future, of that time when I will have to leave this place I have come to call my second home.
It’s almost surreal when I think of how far I’ve come from home. Leaving the sheltered and pampered life and all the comforts of home at seventeen, going overseas for the first time to study… Suddenly “home” is just a place I go back for holidays. Sometimes I miss the second home when I’m back home. It’s almost like two different lives that I lead when I go back and forth from Brunei to Melbourne. Sometimes you wish you can merge the best of both worlds together. But that’s how life is.
It’s easy to think that we’re growing older, but then I think again, and the reality is that I still have at least (hopefully) a good sixty or more years ahead of me. And that’s actually a lot of years. Sixty! There is so much to do. I’ve only lived twenty years of my life. There’s still so much I don’t know, so much I haven’t seen. And this life is really a blessing from God, and it’s only by His grace that I am here.
There’s so much to live for. Life has only just begun.
“Only one life ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
