Sunday 7 June 2015

Living in KL - Part 3 - Life with Friends!!

My life in KL has come full circle - from being taken around the city by friends; to taking friends around the city an year later. This is the story of my first year in KL. The difficulties of being so far away from family were overshadowed by my encounters with some of the best people I have ever met in my life.

It was a roller coaster ride;  and how I wish I could freeze time at the highest moments !!



P.S. This post is third in a series of posts about my life in KL. You can read the other two posts here and here!!


My family members visited me thrice during this year so those were definitely some of the high points of this year.













But what made this year different and gave me unexpected highs were the experiences with people I met here.

For the initial few months, I struggled a little to get used to the life in KL. The red carpet under my feet was suddenly replaced with a long winding road (as a result of my own wise decision, pun intended). Having no car to drive around and no stove to cook on meant that my life switched gears and cranked the heat up. All day long or almost all of the days, I was walking from one place to another following my dear friend Payal and often lagging behind. She walks and she walks and then she walks some more. I knew that before I moved here but I got to know that better this time around :P

When I was able to catch my breath, I realized it was bachelorhood all over again; my daily routine was - eat, roam, watch movies, and repeat. Ohhhh the joys of carefree bachelorhood (don't judge me, I was soon missing my dear hubby and you can read about our reunion here). I was doing stuff I had not done in years; like this bicycle ride we went for in a forest reserve. Thank you Payal for reintroducing me to the love of life.

I was having so much fun with the regained freedom; I couldn't even imagine in my wildest dreams that the free fall of 'my fun first year in KL ride' was yet to come.
On a work assignment, I met Harish. In today's day and age, when common sense is a rare species and intelligence stands near extinction, I long to meet people who are capable of holding a good conversation. Meeting Harish was like discovering a gold mine of healthy, witty conversations. So in my life of eat, roam, watch movies, and repeat; he added the one missing element: healthy conversations.
If you love to read, you would understand what it is like to be able to discuss books - books you have read, books you wanna read, books the other person is reading. The conversations we had diversified from books to religion to airplanes to travelogues to celebrations to festivals and quite predictably to technology (given that we all work in IT sector).
One chance encounter led to another and I was introduced to Murali. He is the calmest person I have ever met. On an absolutely crazy day, you can count on him to still be in Zen mode. The four of us were literally painting the town red and my dear husband (although in a sarcastic conversation) nicknamed us - Fantastic Four. I was happy and truly having the time of my life.


Along with learning to live life to the fullest, I was learning other stuff too. Never in my life so far, have I learned so many things in one single year. It's great to look back at this list of firsts in my year.
For the first time ever I:

  • Drove a car uphill - at my own good pace ;) 
  • Ran a marathon - just that one time
  • Started swimming - still getting the hang of it
  • Had tea in a tea estate - the breeze is intoxicating
  • Celebrated a birthday without family - went better than I expected
  • Started eating with chopsticks - like a pro ;)
  • Filled gas at a self-service gas station - coz the guys with me chickened out
  • Cooked samosas (yummy samosas) - coz they don't make samosas here!!
  • Started speaking 'Singlish' - the dialect of English used in this region

As the year came to an end, we all moved on to better things and places in our lives; thus ending a really interesting chapter. I have heard that every person that crosses your path in life is there for a purpose. You contribute to each other's lives, play your part and move on. If we don't cross paths again, the way we did this time I will know that we have played the roles we were meant to play in each other's lives.

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