Desperate Measures To Prevent Homesickness

Sofi has gone back, back to the land of perestroika, back to where she resides for the past 4 years. The land of freezing , harsh winter where they need to seal the hostel windows or the unforgiving cold air will bite you to the bone. Her seven weeks at home was filled with many memorable things but can never satiate her. The last few days when the dreaded packing time came, she began her legendary must-do , that is to stuff her luggage to the bursting seams! But this time, she is committing the crime on Sarah’s red bag as she had busted her old bag, enough!

You see, Sofi has this weakness of trying to bring her whole room , if not the whole of Malaysia back to Russia! She desperately wants to be at ‘home’ there. Half of her luggage is jammed with sundries as she overloads it with stuffs she deemed necessary for her daily cooking there. She even staved in kaffir lime leaves and lemon grass, enough to quench her tomyam longing for few months, I should say. Whatever she finds on the supermarket shelves that incites her culinary instincts, she’d buy for that ‘what if I need it then?’ occasions. There’s more to this. Believe it or not, she has posted 2 boxes of these cooking goods via sea (submarine as the post-lady had jested) which will arrive in perhaps two months , just in time for her grocery replenishing.

Of course, the other portion of the poor bag is brimmed up with piles of books. As Volgograd has limited bookstores that sell English books, she naturally has to stock up a sufficient supply of fictions or not, to keep her sanity going.

By the way, she managed to pull through during baggage check-in in KLIA. Alhamdulillah the check in lady was extremely nice. After leveling out things between her hand and check in luggage, everything was fine, until she reached Moscow for internal flight to Volgograd. The strict Russians are as unforgiving as their harsh winter. She was charged few hundred roubles for excess baggage.

This weekend, it’s Muhammad’s turn to fly back. As Muhammad is a firm believer of traveling light, we would expect less hassle from him, insyallah. Meanwhile, Sarah is ‘basking’ in house-work and endless errands (plus taking care of my ailing FIL), till she starts work.

To all my kids, may all of you have a successful year ahead filled with Allah’s blessings. Amin.