The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
What’s a place you visited that felt like home?
As a person who has lived many places, I’ve learned that if you want to stay somewhere, you have to make it home.
So for me, ‘Home’ is more a feeling than a physical place.
I’ve made my home, in Toronto, Guelph, and my native Hamilton, Canada; both Seoul and Busan South Korea; Ohangwena, Namibia; Johannesburg, South Africa; as well as Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh, Malaysia.
In fact the first time I referred to somewhere other than Canada as “Home” in front of my family, one family member got offended. “Canada is your home. Don’t forget it.”
I had to explain that for me, there’s a distinction between ‘Home’ and ‘Back home.’ Back home is where I come from, the place that made me, defined the person I was at the beginning of my journey. I’d like to feel that it will always be a place that I would be comfortable returning to, that the cultural adjustments would be minimal. Home is where I live, work, socialize… it’s where my cats live.
Of the places that I’ve visited, it’s easy to imagine many of them being good candidate ‘homes’ when you don’t experience the day-to-day frustrations of commuting, shopping or paying taxes. Even then, just a short stay in Sydney, Australia convinced me it was a great tourist destination but not a place I’d want to live. Same for Barcelona, and Hong Kong.
Of the places I’ve visited as a tourist, the only one that called out to me to ‘live here! Live here!’ was Auckland, New Zealand. I was only there for a few days in 2002, so all the caveats about not truly knowing how it works apply.
Still, I quickly fell in with a crowd of locals who adopted me for the duration of my stay. These people could’ve and maybe would’ve been my co-workers if I’d sought employment there.
I had a similar experience in Bath, England in 1989. I, then an editor of my undergrad student newspaper, fell in with a group that was producing a street paper, something both political and entertainment focused. instead of partying the night in Bath with my fellow backpackers, I found myself helping lay out the next edition of their paper. They were cool people and in return for my effort, they told me stories of living in Bath.
It’s an odd experience, walking into a strange city and immediately finding your people.
But of the places I’ve lived, which has been the easiest to fall into ‘home’ mode? I suppose either Busan or Ipoh and for similar reasons.
Busan was my second city in South Korea, and I moved there after living in Seoul for over two years. So the transition to a new city had all of the excitement of being new, but didn’t have the emotional and cultural baggage of entering a new society.
Ipoh is also my second city in a foreign country, this time Malaysia. With over seven years living in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh was more of a cultural shock in the sense that it was downsizing from a metropolitan to an rural city.
Where foreigners were common in KL, and whole economies survived by servicing them, Ipoh has a much smaller expat community, scattered along the northwestern edge. Where KL has a modern public transportation system that continually expands and improves, Ipoh has buses that you will occasionally see. Both are very much car-culture focussed, but KL has alternatives that Ipoh doesn’t.
Most importantly, for me, and for my wife, Ipoh is her home town. So while I’m ‘home’ in Ipoh, she’s ‘back home.’