The first 30 days

Today marked the 30th day of my arrival to this 'quiet' town of East Malaysia, Miri. It has been a roller coaster ride for me. I thought I will survive this with a breeze, especially after living in US for 1.5 years and used to be away from home. Boy, I was wrong. Every place has different challenges and I sometimes underestimated what I will face.

Week 1

Arrived in Miri on Sunday afternoon alone as I didn't want to feel comfortable to have someone with me. I checked in into my temporary accommodation that the company has generously provided to me. I chose Marriott Resort and Spa as I wanted to be as comfortable as I can, even though the hotel is the furthest hotel from the office, which is 20-30 minutes away driving (in Miri standard, that is far). The first week was the honeymoon week. Everything was a new discovery to me. I excited to see boats, river and sea on the way to office and everyone at the office was good to me. What made it better was the fact on Wednesday one of my good friend in Cyberjaya came to work in my new office and made me less officesick.

That weekend, was the long Chinese New Year weekend and my husband came over. We had a good time exploring Miri and the neighbouring country aka Brunei while enjoying Marriott's facilities. Together we shortlisted areas that I should looked into for my permanent housing here.

In short, I can imagine myself doing well here and whenever people asked me how is the new place, my answer was good.

Week 2

Week 2 went by quite fast. The first 2 days were public holiday and Zainal was here, so whenever he by my side, I'm always ok. The other 3 working days were quite quiet as many people took the opportunity to have long holiday. At this time I started to have officesick. I started to miss my old colleagues and friends, missed to have lunch and chat with them. It was not helping that I still haven't given any jobs. I ended up reading all the material in company website and even managed to finish a 50 pages manual.

That Friday my parents arrived and weekend was not so bad. As usual, there's nothing much to do in Miri except driving around and Brunei. At least I wasn't lonely that weekend and it has been awhile since I spend time alone with my parents and this was a great opportunity.

Week 3

This was the week that I discovered things going down the drain emotionally. At third week of working in new office, I still haven't have lunch buddies, not even one. Not even one person asked me if I want to join them for lunch. Everyday I need to ask around if I can join them. This is where I realized there's 2 kind of friendly -  a genuine one and a fake one. The lowest point of the week was when I was so down and lonely, I drove to McD drive thru with tears running my cheek, bought my lunch and parked at the side road to eat it. 

However Allah has answered my prayer that day when I met a friend who moved here from Cyberjaya and we made a pact to become default lunch buddy. I realized she was having the same issue with me and that made me feel better as I know I was not alone in feeling this. 

This has definitely lighten up my sadness a bit but I still didn't have any works in the office. I raised this to my supervisor and she asked me to use this time to myself while she sort out my portfolio. At this time I was restless at office, I started to think more about this job. Is it worth it? Why am I doing this? Is this what I want in life? When I started thinking like this, I know this is not good.

Alhamdulillah Zainal came that weekend. Not seeing him almost two weeks added the stress and made me emotionally wreck. At least being with him for one night released a huge amount of sadness and loneliness that I have been carrying all week.

Week 4

Finally I started to do my work. The real work. Business invited me to join him in a meeting in KLCC which means I got to go back home! Even for less than 24 hours -arrived in KL at 10.30pm and my flight back to Miri the next day at 9pm, it means a lot to me.. But it is definitely recharged me. This week brought me more good news. My car has arrived and so were my stuff. Finally familiar things! Ditched the new car that my company lend to me to drive my old faithful Gen 2. It felt so good to be with something that I familiar with which remind me that I'm not far away from home.

That weekend I went home. It was so good to be home and I missed everything about home. And that is how I survived my first month here.

Oh, 18 months, please come quickly and let me finish this as soon as possible.