COMING HOME SHOULD be easy, or so I thought. After four years of living in the UK, I imagined that returning to Penang would feel like slipping back into a familiar rhythm: of the food, the languages, the old streets I grew up knowing and the people I once called my “community”. Instead, I found myself readjusting to and navigating changes—in Penang and within myself—before coming to the unsettling realisation that life back home had continued without me, while I was busy building a life halfway across the globe. Is this an inescapable feeling, and if not, what does this experience feel like for other returnees?
A RETURN TO FAMILIARITY
To grasp perspectives beyond my own, I sent out a questionnaire and conducted interviews with peers who had returned to Penang after living overseas, as well as those who were still abroad. Among my respondents, family was the major factor behind their return home, followed by career prospects, cost of living and personal relationships, among others. Notably, not everyone found the transition back to Malaysia difficult, highlighting how differently “reverse culture shock”—that is, “the process of readjusting, reacculturating and reassimilating into one’s own home culture after living in a different culture for a significant period of time”—is experienced.[1]
For Lynn, who spent three years studying in the UK, returning to Penang meant navigating a very different working and social culture. After an academically intense and relatively liberal environment abroad, she found Bayan Lepas’s industrial work culture overwhelming. “I met people who were obsessed with quirky interests and those who could reconcile two contradictory belief systems while studying there [the UK], but I saw less curiosity of this nature in Penang,” she recalled.
