Today is the 516^th day Mee and I in UK. Well, it’s almost a year and a half. We might have only come to UK this year if my sister did not help us. Two or three years back, Mee and I had been planning to try our luck in UK since my sister is already here. However, money had always been the problem. As you know, or might not know, the currency exchange rate is about £1 to RM6 ++.

Luckily, my sister offered to help us financially as well as accommodation, which is why our plan, sort of, could go
smoothly. We thought it might be easy to survive but things were not as easy as imagined. Everything seems to start from the beginning.

Hmm… initially, we had come to study IT courses and thinking that we might be able to get a job through the internship included in our course. When we arrived in UK, we had Nandos for our dinner. As we ate, the lighting seemed to get dimmer and we felt sleepier. And the amount of chips made us felt nauseous. I need to clarify here. It’s not the
chips that made us nauseous. It’s just the lighting and our condition at that time that made us felt that way. Maybe it’s the jet-lag too. After all, it was the first time I had a long-flight.

During the first week or so, my sis brought us to the college and showed us around London. We went to Big Ben, London Eye, Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Chinatown. Then, we had our meals at a Malaysian Cuisine restaurant. It’s kind of weird because that was only our first week in UK and we shouldn’t be missing Malaysia food, isn’t it? But sometime later, Mee and I often went there after our classes.

Soon, Mee and I went looking for part-time jobs. We first thought that it would be easy to get one but we hadn’t gotten any news after few days later. However, we did manage to work in Burger King. Everything looked good at first but as time goes, it was nightmare. The staffs were good except the manager. Well, it’s got to be a long long story. I shan’t explain it here.

I think we settled in quite fast and thought that life in UK was more or less the same in Malaysia except we didn’t have our own car and neither of us was working full-time at that time. It’s either train or wait for my sis to drive us around. During weekend, we would go to the college 3 times a week for classes and practical. Our schedule was quite tight because we were either at college or working part-time.

On and off, my sis would treat us Chinese takeaways and Nandos. We often went to Wing Yip, a Chinese supermarket, to stock up our food.