I think sometimes when I say I’m homesick, it’s partly that I miss family, friends, food, home; even the weather

But it’s also, in watching this short film

I miss being in an environment that I 100% get. All of the characters in the film are composites of people I probably know. I know how all of the food in the background tastes. I know how it sounds.

I don’t think it’s easy to convey how good the food is. And how that’s central to life over there. Think of the best Chinese food you’d ever had and then 10x it. And that’s just every street corner in Penang and Ipoh. And you’re in a community that centers all of this celebration of joy and food and that speaks in multiple languages in the same sentence.

I miss all of it.

If all of my life experiences were on a scale of 100, the person that I am in America, even in a part of it that is very Asian, where I don’t really feel like an outsider at all, feels like just 20.

Living away from *that* environment (Singapore / Malaysia / India, my homes feels like the missing 80.

I miss being surrounded by people who understand that every single meal in your life ought to be the most delicious thing you will ever eat. Who understand that we don’t have to accept anything less

And that the expectation of good food is not a classist thing in the same way it is where I am now. There, it seems like everyone expects it. I don’t want to feel like a weirdo. In Penang, I am the least intense foodie in comparison to random aunties on the street.