Alone Yet Not Lonely: The Much-Anticipated Travel to The Destined Land

Caption: Family members (incomplete) and the family of the caretaker when I was a baby came to send me off.
(P.S. this will be more of a throwback post since I abandoned blogging (once again!) and started to feel like breathing life back into this blog again!)

 Alas, it was finally mid-September 2018 - not too far away from the start of a new phase in my life. It was a continuation of living the status as a student albeit at a higher level. "Levelling up" in life can be somewhat analogous to a game. The more you level up, the more challenging your quests become.

Alongside the anticipation of challenges in embarking on a new discipline of knowledge i.e. law, there were a lot of alien experiences that life had in store for me. Moving to a new place will always bring about the same feelings no matter how many times you do it. It becomes overwhelming: an oxymoron-like combination of sorrow and excitement.  Such feelings intensify when you're alone. 

Due to unexpected variables, I was situated on the journey to the UK from Malaysia alone. A connected flight with a few hours of transit in Dubai. It sure felt different - I had to be more alert, and it was not easy to do so with messed up sleeping schedules in the aeroplane and the general confusing nature of jetlag. 

However, alhamdulillah, I was sent blessings throughout my journey. Despite being alone, the feeling of loneliness was reduced by such blessings. During the first flight from Malaysia to Dubai, I was grateful to find a familiar face next to my seat. I sat next to a junior from my A-level college who was going to Nottingham as well! Imagine how blessed I felt by this coincidence. Once in transit, we separated as they were going to the first class lounge, while I just sat near the boarding area - the place for economy passengers. The few hours passed by slowly and I started to feel a little lonely. It was during that time, I tried to put a positive twist on my situation. I once heard that solitude is good for self-reflection. A little me-time was put to good use. My journal (recently gifted to me by my sister) was opened and the (accompanying) pen was lifted. My thoughts were translated into ink onto the pages of the shop-scented notebook. On the second flight from Dubai to London, my ambivert self wanted to have a conversation with someone but at the same time, I felt unconfident.  So, I utilised the entertainment screen that Emirates provided. After some movies, some language games and podcasts, time flew by quickly. Towards the end of the flight, I finally chatted with the Aussie girl beside me who was around the same age. She was also embarking on a new journey - the difference was her travel was more literal in the sense that she travelled to the UK to backpack around the horizons. 

Then the time came for queueing up in the immigration area. Due to the place being unfamiliar and my lack of expertise in finding directions, I was a bit nervous and feeling a little lost. You know what I did? As you could imagine, there was A LOT of people as it was the season to start university academic years. So I just scanned the area for people who looked the same as me - a student with a file full of documents. I specifically tagged along with a Malaysian girl with her parents and started a conversation with them so that it didn't seem too much like I was stalking them LOL. Thank God the waiting time was shortened by a special line for students. 

Arriving in London meant that another pitstop had been passed by and marked. There was one more sub-journey to go, this time with a different mode of transportation. National Express bus to Nottingham, here we (or rather, I, since I was alone) go! I sat next to an African mother who was frantically trying to connect to the internet to update her son on her journey. Seeing her reminded me of my grandparents (and to some extent, my parents) who occasionally ask for help with anything to do with IT. So I tried connecting her to WiFi but the messages on WhatsApp didn't go through. Thank God, using my hotspot worked. Well, I guess a portion of my data was meant to be shared - just like rizq in general where some portion of it should be shared with others! We had a nice chat, and before I knew it I was in Nottingham.

Not long after waiting in the cold rainy weather under the bus stop, two seniors (kak Shahizan and kak Hayati) came with umbrellas and smiles and welcoming arms as warm as rays of sunshine to console the cold, quivering and nervous me. Warmth further comfortably hugged me: literally, with the heater kindly provided by kak Rifhan who provided me accommodation while waiting for the rented house to be ready, and metaphorically, with an array of new faces - sweet, smiling and reassuring faces.