Penny's World

Author: Penny

  • UK (Penny’s version)

    Brighton, 12/10/2021
    Welcome to Midnight Musings, Chapter 2: UK (Penny’s version).

    My UK journey has been a myriad of emotions to say the least. From the highest highs to the lowest lows, this has been an adventure and sparring a few details I wouldn’t have it any other way.
     
    I came to the UK as a Masters degree student eager to explore the world, soak in the culture, learn from the best in their field but most of all to become independent. And I got to tick all of these off my bucket list. But everything came at a price. The picture above was taken on my first birthday in the UK. Growing up in a very close knit family my birthdays used to be a huge thing with my mom cooking my favourite dishes to my dad getting my favourite birthday cake- my day used to be all about the hustle. However, my first birthday in the UK was not like that. 

    I remember starting the day at around 8 a.m. on a Tuesday morning of October to get my breakfast sorted followed by a 3 hour long class and a meeting with colleagues to discuss a topic decided by our professor for next week’s class. It was rough. I couldn’t concentrate throughout my class and felt homesick a lot. The time difference meant I wasn’t able to call my parents immediately so I confided about it in my flatmate who then took me out on a lunch date. Standing in the corner of a random street of Brighton, I felt the price I paid for my years of independence. 

    Being an international student or even simply being an expat is hard and growing up watching movies that show you a distorted reality doesn’t make it easier. It unfolds a journey of learning and unlearning: I have had to forego habits that were dear to me and develop new ones. I have rediscovered myself or facets of my personality time and again. I have fought my own demons and come out of my comfort zone to adapt to the norms of the country: and in retrospect I have loved every bit of it.

    My life became an embodiment of the phrase "change is the only constant".  I studied Political Science all my adult life and went on to work in finance and fell in love with it. I saw my life change drastically- from food habits to my Netflix watchlist. My icebreaker questions went from “How are you doing?” to “Bit chilly, innit?” overtime. I have had to learn to call my professors, my managers by their first names and be comfortable with it. Most of all, I have learnt about myself and have learnt to accept defeat.

    If I have to put three years of my life in one blog; more so in one paragraph this is what I would have to say: UK has been a rollercoaster ride with the best bunch of people. However, despite common misconceptions, your quality of life doesn’t immediately get better when you shift abroad. In my experience, it gets hard before it gets better. 

    ·To be hungry for one whole day because your part-time job’s shift sneaked up on you during your assignments and you lost track of time and forgot to cook anything: it teaches you what life is. 

    ·To have crippling self-doubt but still show up looking your best teaches you adaptability. 

    ·Doing 18 hours work days including assignments, part-time job and your daily chores just in time to get enough sleep for months at end- teaches you to be resilient in a way nothing else can. 

    All of this has made me want to give up many a times and go back but every time I kept asking myself: didn’t you always want this? Didn’t you always want to be independent? Didn’t you dream day in and day out of living abroad? And when the answer kept coming back as yes- it gave me strength to look life in the eye and say ‘bring it on!’.  

    I found facets of me that would have stayed hidden had I not moved miles away from home. I found people who made me push my boundaries and become a better version of me. I found home in myself: became happy in my own skin; my own space. The other part of it has been a dream come true ✨; but more about that in the next one!

    Leaving a few snippets of the other half on here. I hope you enjoy. For now I leave you with one thing- believe in miracles, they happen ❤
    King’s Cross Station, October 2021
    University of Sussex, September 2021

    London, March 2022 ♥️

  • Who Am I? Exploring the Essence of Self

    Who am I? My mind reiterates this question time and again and I travel back to days long lost to make sense of my identity, my being, my life.

    When I was 6 years old, my mother brought home a DVD of an infamous movie named the Sound of Music – the cover caught my attention. A woman in her early adulthood with the biggest smile on her face having the time of her life in the most beautiful of places. I don’t know what made me happy- the smile on the woman’s face or the beautiful hills that formed the backdrop of that picture. Now I know that it was the former. The latter merely complemented the joy and exuberance of this woman. I would go on to know her name years later while watching Princess Diaries. You might be thinking why I am rambling on about Julie Andrews and movies I watched growing up- wasn’t this supposed to be about who I am? Well, it still is. Consider this to be my epilogue to what is going to be a long journey of finding myself.

    Well that being said, let me pan the camera back to why I mention the Sound of Music. This movie featured a song that I learnt well before watching this movie – firstly from my mother and then gradually at school. The song went –

    Do, a deer, a female deer

    Re, a drop of golden sun

    Mi, a name I call myself

    Fa, a long long way to run…

    And so on and so forth. However, I got to know how the song starts only upon being introduced to this movie. Julie Andrews’ character takes the Von Trapp children to the very hill she used to run to from the church and finds out that the children were unaware of the music notes and therefore begins this song to teach them the same. She starts the song with the following lyrics:

    Let’s start from the very beginning,

    a very good place to start.

    When you read you begin with A-B-C.

    When you sing you begin with do-re-mi.

    Now this is where my monologue about the Sound of Music- might make sense to you. Everything we learn in this life has a definitive starting point – a definite structure to it. We know where our alphabets begin, our numbers begin ( at least what we are taught in our initial years, integers are a whole different can of worms), our education, our life – all very structured. The one thing to which no one has an answer to is, where do I begin? And I don’t mean to say this in the context that a speaker cannot find a definitive starting point while narrating a story. What I mean instead is, at what point or when do I become my own person- an amalgamation of my thoughts, ideas, morals, ethics etc etc etc and not the reflection of what my parents or friends or lover or haters or the society think I should be? Or who they think I am?

    Hence the question with which I started- Who am I? Am I my own person yet or am I still what people say and think who I am? When does one become their own person – is it when they finally take control of what happens in their life or does it happen within us before it takes fruition in the materialistic world? I write this blog to make sense of myself and hoping someone might find answers to similar questions that come to them at night.

    In my mind, I am not my person yet. A part of me is independent – and I know that part of me well— but not well enough. It’s still in the making- I am breaking and building it up again. I am marvelling at the beauty of what I have become. I am hating a few parts of it and trying to change it or accept it- trying to be comfortable in my skin. But there is another part of me- the part that makes me question myself. The part that makes me ask the same question again and again- and to make some sense of all my midnight musings- I take it to this blog!

    For now, I am just a girl trying to find a place in the world ❤

    P.S.- I hope you people don’t get bored of some very obvious Taylor Swift references!