Leaving Europe, coming back home. Feelings, travelling, racism, privileges… random thoughts.

I apologize for not updating for almost a month. It has been a very emotional month. I attempted to write a few blog posts but I find my thoughts way too troubled.

I’m gonna share my hopefully-once-in-a-lifetime experience of coming back home unprepared due to the pandemic.

In February, when the pandemic was hitting Asia, I made a lot of racist jokes. I caught a bad cold from the windstorm (turned out walking an hour in 50km/h wind was not a great idea) and I was coughing badly. So as a coughing Asian I was like ‘hah, I am going to HIVE (a night club) and spread corona’. It was funny back then, but given how bad this whole thing had turned out, it is definitely not funny now.

In early March, when the crisis started to hit the U.K., I was still planning my trip to France, e-mailing Workaway hosts in order to arrange my itinerary. I was still hanging out with my friends, having coffees in coffee shops, partying and not giving a shit about the crisis, just like most young people in Glasgow. My parents started to be concern and asked me if I was thinking about coming home. I was confident that things were still under controlled, until the U.K. government was not taking serious measurement on this matter and proposed the idea of herd immunity. Shocking.

Mid-March, a few cases were confirmed in University of Glasgow and all on-campuses classes were cancelled. The gym and the library were still opened, but I did not want to risk it and stayed home (I used to go there at least 3 times a week). To be honest, another reason I chose to stay home was due to the targeted racism towards Asians. A girl I knew got egged on the street. Two Arabs knocked on my flatmate’s friend’s door looking for Asians. Day by day I walked around the city being more and more cautious. If I were to be frank, I actually felt safer to walk together with my white friends. This security that I needed from my white friends made me feel pathetic. Why did I have to feel bad in my own skin?

Racism is a hidden threat that affects me deeply. Please do not tell me that I am being oversensitive and I should just ‘ignore the racists’, because I can’t. When I am out there alone, I am worried that someone that I do not know might just assault me out of nowhere. I do not even need to do anything to provoke him or her, I just have to exist. Two years ago when I was in Italy, I knew the prejudice against Asians was strong enough. Imagine with this virus… I am rather concern about travelling alone outside Asia now.

After the university was partially closed, most of my close friends left Glasgow. Some of them invited me to stay with them in their home countries if I did not want to travel back to Malaysia. I really appreciated the offer, but I did not want to burden them as we all had no idea how long I would have to stay with them. I was confused about how to react. On one hand, I wanted to stay in Glasgow because I enjoyed my life there. On the other hand, I knew things would not be the same anymore as my friends had left and the city was going to be in lock-down. With my rent costing me RM2.4k every month, I knew that if I were to get stuck in the U.K. for months I would be broke in no time. Eventually I booked my flight with KLM on 29th of March, which was two weeks later from that point of time as I needed some time to say goodbye to Glasgow. The flight ticket costed me 650 pounds (RM3.5k), which was okay. To compare, Malaysia Airline’s direct flight from London to KL costed around 1,000 pounds (RM5k).

For the next few days I carried out my daily routine as usual. Waking up early in the morning, working on my assignments, getting a cup of coffee, walking around the park and the city center while practicing social distancing. (P/s: I hate how the weather started to get beautiful when I was leaving!) My flatmate had his friends over and we were still drinking and playing beer pong. Everything felt normal, or at least I pretended to be normal.

But it was not. 5 days before my departure, I found out that my flight was cancelled. I was in panic but I did not want to inform my parents because they were already worried sick.

All KLM flights to Kuala Lumpur was suspended beginning 27th of March. I could either change my flight or get a refund in the form of travel voucher. I did not want any travel voucher! What the heck. How likely are people going to travel within the next 12 months? I only needed my money back. The only thing I could do was to change my flight and luckily there were two flights left. One on the 26th,  one on the 27th. I failed to change my flight online, so I had to leave them messages on Facebook and WhatsApp. Due to the high traffic volume, I received no reply in the next 24 hours (which drove me crazy). After attempting to call them multiple times, my call was finally connected. On the 25th of March, I was finally able to change my flight to 27th of March, literally, the last flight home with KLM. Pretty sure the operator was in shock when I said I wanted to fly so soon. She was like,’wait, this Friday?!’ Yes. Hun. No more flights until mid-May. I had no choice. I did not feel too relieved even when my flight was successfully changed, because there was still a chance that the flight might get cancelled. I checked my flight status every fucking hour because that was how worried I was. I could not sleep soundly because I was tense.

(At this point of writing I still have nightmares of being stuck in the U.K. unable to catch my flight home LOL)

I spent my last night in Glasgow watching a movie with my flatmate. My flight was at 9am, but I was afraid that I would oversleep so I decided to sleep on the couch and wake up at 4am. (I missed my flight once. I could not afford missing this one.) I walked to the airport at 5.30a.m. (shoutout to Thomas for helping me with my luggage) and then took a bus to the airport. I had a rather unpleasant experience at the airport where the lady seemed to segregate the passengers to an all-Asian line and a all-white line. I was upset and wanted to reason with her, but I did not have the extra time and energy.

Airport Lounge

Boarding Gate

Sorry for the really bad photos. I was too tired.

The Schipol airport was oddly empty. I was rather familiar with the airport because I flew with KLM multiple times, but to see how empty it was… The seats at the airport were also taped in order to make sure each available seat was at least 3 seats away from another. it was just strange. Here is the board showing flight status. Mostly cancelled.

An explicit picture of how exhausted I was: I went to the bathroom, didn’t lock the door completely, someone pulled the door opened, I was sitting on the toilet half naked yet I didn’t even have the energy to feel embarrassed. Sorry lady. I was disoriented.

9 hours of layover was a torture. All restaurants were closed. I ate only cookies for that 9 hours. Sitting at the corner, I washed my hands from time to time until my hands were dried out.

I met a Dutch who was working in London. He told me that he went to Osaka for his friend’s wedding but then he was stuck there for 2 weeks. He booked with 5 different airlines yet his flights were all eventually cancelled. Damn. Yet here I am thinking how my one cancel flight was enough of a torture. And also En Qi why do you always talk to strangers?

Before leaving the aircraft.

On the KLM flight, all the passengers were seated as far away from the others as possible. I was seated beside the window and I enjoyed having the whole row to myself. Hahaha. Yes I put my feet on the other seats. IT WAS A 12 HOURS FLIGHT DON’T JUDGE. I did not wear any mask on the flight because… because. I didn’t see the point of it. If someone really carried the virus onboard, a face mask would not protect me from the virus. I was kinda like ‘let fate decides’ lol.

I did wear masks at the airports okay. I only had two with me (shoutout to Deanna <3) so I had to choose the best time to wear them. It was a 24 hours journey.

A spectacular flight view of Afghanistan.

 

Anyway when I got back to Malaysia I took a Grab to the Airbnb I rented in Empire Damansara. I stayed there for 14 days isolating myself because I did not want to put my family at risk. Yikes, if I came back few days later I would have been sponsored accommodation and three meals at a nice hotel by the government hahaha. I paid RM1k for two weeks stay myself. Thank goodness for ERASMUS+ Scholarship. I would have been broke if I did not receive any funding from the EU for my study.

FYI, we did not get tested when we landed in Malaysia. There was a thermal camera that scanned our temperature when we passed through. We filled up a form indicating our flight details and the address we were going to carry out 14 days of self-quarantine. Here’s an image of it –

14 days alone was nice. I could walk around without any clothes. But I was still rather depressed about how my exchange ended abruptly. Yet I was even more depressed about how the situation changed the whole world. I was glad that with the scholarship money I would not be facing any financial difficulty in the next few months. However, there are many people out there who could barely afford 3 meals.

I want to urge people to practice compassion. In this difficult time, if you are complaining about how you cannot travel anymore, please stop. Things could have been much worse. People are dying, people are starving, but if all you can complain about is how you can’t go out and enjoy that cup of milk tea, or how your flight tickets can’t be put into good use, or how much you have to study at the moment, check your fucking privileges. I am getting fed up of how people complaining all these little things when there are so much more causes that people should be concern about.

Also I am done with my semester now. I am open for deep conversation if you are interested.

Stay safe, stay healthy. My greetings to you and your family. x