In sync.

My mother always said that there will come a day when my childhood friends and I will have nothing in common. They will move to different places, meet new friends, get married, have babies, and generally be too busy with their own lives to think about those lost days. In a way, that has happened. I mean, where are we now? Most aren't even in Kemaman anymore. We're in KL, Singapore, India, Arab, Australia, the UK, the US... apparently anywhere but home.

But unlike everyone else, I think I might be the only person who is going to be settling abroad for good. Everyone else seems to have some sort of plan to move back in the future.

Whilst I am happy with my life here, sometimes I do miss the simpler days when friends were only a walk or a bicycle ride away. Even in college, friends weren't far. The entire city didn't turn into a ghost town once the clock ticks 5.30pm - it wakes up with a new face. And I miss the free and easy lifestyle of mamak-ing at night with friends - when the weather is cooling down, the food and drinks are cheap and plentiful. Even the freedom of going out and picking up a mindblowingly yummy Ramlee burger for RM2-RM3 per burger I miss. Eating out here for the both of us typically costs us around £15-£20 if we're behaving, a lot more if we're not. McDonald's is around £8 each time we go. And we can't afford that sort of thing regularly.

I feel so solitary and restricted sometimes because going out almost invariably means spending more money that I should.

I miss my friends.

I miss the food.

I miss mamak-ing.

But I don't know if I could give up all that I have here to go back to that. It is tempting, but what I have here is a sure thing. Life here is reliable. I have a stable salaried job, I have a boy who wants to marry me, I will soon own my own home (albeit with a lot of debt), I am gradually losing my Malaysian accent and my Manglish-ness and blending in with the locals, I have a pension. Hell, I even have a credit rating!

I have none of this in Malaysia. I wouldn't know where my paycheque would come from. I wouldn't have a house. Or a pension. And my boy does not speak the other language that is almost essential in securing a job in Malaysia. I don't even know how easily I would ease back into speaking Malay or Mandarin - I've not spoken either of them in such a long time.

I know my mother has a plan. She would like me to go back and get into the family business. She would also like to recruit Boy to deal with the paperwork/technical side of things, non-customer facing jobs, so language wouldn't be a barrier (though Boy is pretty skilled at picking up languages, given time and practice). But I'm pretty sure Boy's mother will be crushed if we were to move abroad - he has a much closer relationship with his mother than I have with mine. And speaking of that, I will probably row with my parents every single day if I were to live close to home.

It has happened. I don't miss the rows, the anger, the tears.

I don't miss the heat, the scorching sun baking our sweat onto our skin.

I don't miss the mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, and other insects you see on a regular basis in Malaysia.

I don't miss the cost of owning an air-conditioner, the cost of electricity it uses and the frequent breakdowns it invariably will go through.

I don't miss the traffic jams and the subsequent overheating cars.

I don't miss family gatherings with my extended relatives.

So I guess the cons list may have trumped the pros list there. Perhaps after we get to the stage where Boy's parents are... where they can sell off their property, retire in, say, Malaysia and never have to work again for the rest of their lives. Perhaps we would be tempted then. :)

It's nice to know, though, that despite being far-flung to so many different places, we're still at the same stage in life. We're 25 years old, in long-term/serious relationships, we are out of school and employed, we are buying our first properties. It's quite incredible, isn't it?