You move, you life

As I was leaving Kuala Lumpur, what Bryan said as I pulled out of his driveway reverberated, as if it had run around a mental track and finally got to a point where it could present itself again, in the style of a kid, hand raised, waving, because they had something they just have to share.

Life is not just a journey, he had said. The journey is life.

In response, I smiled, which he matched, as usual. There was no pressure for more words. No need to affirm or question. The friendship was easy like that. That day, however, he felt compelled to add, 'when you reach the destination, that's the end, unless you decide to take another trip.'

Meaning to say, we choose the end. We choose to change or to stay the same. We choose movement or stability. Which is not to say you can't find stability in movement, or course, but generally that takes practice. There is an invisible line through. We can choose to ignore when change is turning into chaos, or when stability has crossed over to being stagnant. Possibilities are great, but there's no action in them. It's different with making a choice; decisions are lifemaking.

The road to Perak was easy the way going from state to state is easy. There are less choices to make on the highways, less room for error. And, of course, discovery.

The car belonged to Ling, another friend, who had left it in the capital and had to rush home. Incidentally, I was passing through Malaysia and didn't mind the detour, visiting a new town and the chance to reconnect with an old friend. At that point, I had been travelling for four years. Unbeknownst to me, friends thought I was soul searching and haven't found it yet.

I slowed the car down to 80 km/h, nearly all the way to Ipoh, a city famous for bean sprouts, of all things. The fattest, juiciest, crunchiest you'd see in all the world. They say it's the water, rich with limestone, that gives the roots their mighty powers.

Before Ipoh, I had never noticed that quality in any of the bean sprout dishes I've encountered. Not that I have eaten much of it. Despite how fun they are, my fellow Asian female friends stay away from ordering them whenever we go out because apparently bean sprouts have a cooling effect on the womb. That often leaves me the only one to finish off the dish. I like variety, so sometimes I order them just because it's been a while since I had them.

Ever since I ventured out of the set path, I hardly drove. Now, I was behind the wheel, with no traffic and the horizon promised a drizzle. Nothing dangerous but with enough exposure to make me stay on the alert. Life was good.

The shifting weather, the long stretch of road, the handful of fellow travelers going at their own pace and for their own purposes, me and the facilitating machine just rolling in time was like a signal that things were about to take a turn. Not in a disastrous way. I'm generally not pessimistic or cynical and have zero talent for awfulising.

I've been meeting life day by day. They each looked different. Just like this occasion when I decided to visit a friend and got the opportunity to deliver a mutual friend's car. It was all unplanned. I wasn't rushing anywhere, but I was hardly drifting. Nor was I lost. I have simply not met this life before, never known about limestone hills that could produce something usually bland into something so stout they had a distinctive flavour.

The bean sprouts, I must say, were legendary.

A few days later...

I had been with Ling and her family for a few days and she was showing me around her quiet, quaint and palpably transmuting town. As a long-term traveler, you develop a certain vibe radar for places and although Ipoh had the outward appearance of being sleepy, there was an electrifying undercurrent of change, much like the underground fires of Southeast Asian peatlands, running beneath the surface.

I was sitting on the back seat, taking in the scene and the in-car conversation. Ling had her torso turned to face me as we talked. She had just left her full-time job, to freelance - for the company she had left, funnily enough. She's getting used to the idea of commanding her own time, even though it was something that, for a long time, she had not only imagined would happen but planned for. Still, the weight of the decision was taking shape. She flapped between glee and gloom - happy for her freedom and nervous for the loss of the beloved security she was used to (and felt she needed as a mother of two young children).

Her husband, Liew, was driving. Like our friend Bryan, Liew has a sweet face. He looked the type who would smile in his sleep.

Prompted by the topic of discussion, I was able to articulate what has been internally percolating for some time. It has taken me a while, I told her, to understand and decide that I am no longer measurable by what I earn, what I do, what I own or what I give.

Even though it didn't immediately bother me to shift from a comfortable salary to intermittent earning, there were challenging moments when I wanted to get or do something and realised that restraint and planning were necessary. Sometimes, it took a reframing, inching the object desire out of the picture.

The monthly income came with a job, in itself some icon of social standing, which was well regarded, the loss of which was both praised as courageous and deemed foolish among my family and peers. Though they didn't say it out loud, their faces reflected those zombie fires of awe-mixed disapproval.

Although I still had much of my possessions, I traveled with only a bag, weighing anything between 6 to 7 kilograms. I wore the same three sets of clothing by day and the same pyjamas at night. Everything I owned, apart from the laptop, chargers and current journal, were travel sized.

Surprisingly, the hardest one to not peg my worth to was what I choose to give. Perhaps it's because I'm Asian, where a child is expected to give to the parent, or the young to the old. Perhaps, too, the fact that I was raised in a giving society, one that was largely rich, that generosity was not a virtue, but a given. When my ability to give gifts, offer treats, or contribute as much to the family dwindled, I often wondered if I should put my boots to rest and return to the world that I had left behind.

Ling didn't need explanation, though. She was used to giving and that point had, in fact, been her biggest worry. We stared at each other, bemused and thankful.

After that visit, we stayed in touch a couple more times on Facebook but we haven't met each other since. It's been more than 17 years of vagabonding. While most people take sabbaticals from work, I pause traveling for the occasional full-time job.

I'm never at one place for too long, though. Straying from the road makes me feel like a tourist. That could change one day. After all, the adventure is in living.