Next Train Out

I moved to the UK in 2022 and if I had known what was in store, I might have moved with a little less enthusiasm, or perhaps chosen to stay put altogether.

In a blink of an eye, I’ve been in the UK for two years, now travelling back and forth between KL and London because I’m in a long distance relationship with my parents, my partner, and everyone else in my life.

Living in London was a dream of mine since I first visited the city over the holidays when I was a student. I remember boarding a very busy train with my incredibly kind and tall housemate. Back then, I had to pinch my pennies and book cheap but inconvenient train tickets months in advance to save a few extra pounds.

It was a busy train and my housemate was headed to London too, so we decided to travel together. The train was packed and we couldn’t find a seat so we sat on our bags for almost four hours, in between the carriages.

I remember so vividly the excitement I felt pulling into the big city. People wrote songs about this place, films were set here, famous people lived here. It was huge, it was thrilling.

That first trip, I stayed with my aunty and uncle up in Golders Green, a home and family that continues to welcome me up to this day, more than 10 years later.

I look back on the last two years I’ve had since moving abroad. They have been incredibly difficult but I’ve also been incredibly lucky.

–

I moved to Bristol on the 12th of March 2022, just as Covid restrictions were easing up in Malaysia. My first meal in Bristol showed me a side of the pandemic I never knew existed. Bristol was free and easy while I still had my mask on. I had dinner at The Spaghetti Incident which was close to my hotel and surprised that I didn’t have to “check-in”. I thought the tables were too close.

For the first month, I lived in an Airbnb on Pembroke road with two strange, futuristic churches. At the top of the road was Clifton Down, a wonderful park that came to life in the sunshine. There was a week at the start of April 2022 when the sun came out in full force. I remember spaghetti straps and bare backs in the afternoons, and the golden orange hues in the evening. Walking back from work by Queen Square, along the canal and up the hills, I always caught the Wills Memorial Tower in beautiful light.

It didn’t take me too long to find a one-bedroom apartment in the centre of town. I chose it because it was close to work, not knowing that a month after signing the lease, I would be told I was made redundant due to a restructure. My HR partner broke down when she delivered the news, which gave me permission to do the same. It was a really hard day. I got wasted and went on a bender alone that weekend.

The weeks following were difficult as I tried to see the bright side of things. I stayed employed for a month or so because there was still work to be done. I helped download different parts of the website onto a Google Drive folder before we shut it down, I wrote memos about what we could do with our vibrant social media following, and how a sister company could cross promote their services to attract some of our followers. I wrote draft email announcements notifying users that the app and community they loved so much was going to disappear. These were shitty tasks, but as my manager said, “It’ll be a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime experience”.

At the same time, I worked for our sister company to see if there was role for me there. I joined as the team was preparing to attend the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and got to attend too. Let me save you some money by telling you that it’s awful and expensive. That said, I did greet Mary Berry, Aisling Bea and the mom from Bridgerton. The weeks leading up to the event was terrible, the days spent in the cold tents were terrible, and I swore never to return again.

So, I went on garden leave shortly after.

–

I reached out to friends, family and old colleagues for help. I was in fight or flight mode, but spent most of my days feeling sad about what happened, too tired and perplexed to fight or flight. Friends, god bless my friends, helped where they could. I got an interview because of a referral from a friend. I was given some freelance work from an old coworker which helped financially. I was even offered a full-time role in Germany with an old client. There were so many important decisions to make and it didn’t feel like there was room for any mistakes.

I applied for role after role, whether that was in a marketing agency in Bath or a tech company in Bristol or London. Most companies and recruiters lost interest when I told them I needed a visa to live and work in the UK, which only fed the anxiety I felt in those days.

Did I mention the cost of living crisis was in full swing then too? It was a great time to sign a one-year lease for a one-bedroom apartment in the centre of Bristol.

The few interviews I got, I kept screwing them up. It was like something wasn’t clicking when I answered these interview questions. I knew I had the skills and the right experience for these roles, but I just wasn’t getting past the first hurdle. It wasn’t until I stumbled across a video by Henry Wang about what a product marketer’s role really was, that I realised I had been responding like a marketer instead of a product marketer.

It was such a silly epiphany but I’m glad I realised it when I did, because I soon secured my dream job in August 2022.

But I didn’t start at the new company until November 2022. The delays, I was told, caused by the influx of refugee visa applications from Ukraine. It was only in October, after waiting 3 months and following up consistently every week, did the lawyers check on my application.

Turns out, my biometrics information never left the VFS office in London. It took another month for us to reapply and for me to finally obtain the right to live and work in the UK.

–

Those four months of waiting started off well. My partner came to visit for just over a month. I didn’t have a couch so we spent our evenings watching movies in the living room on an air mattress. We went camping in Cornwall because I needed a cheap(ish) break and I couldn’t leave the country in the midst of a visa application. I insisted we ate in or only ordered from Too Good To Go to lower expenses because my savings were dwindling day by day. We explored the city and had drinks by the river, and he held me when I needed him the most.

My sister and her partner arrived soon after he left, and my days were filled with exploring Bristol and London and Northern Scotland. We hadn’t seen each other for almost two years at that point, and it felt like a part of me came to life again. I hadn’t realised how much I had missed her. We spent my birthday together and we splurged on crepes at Chez Marcel in the afternoon and hotpot at the “It’s Not” Hot Pot in the evening. They also replaced my shower curtain.

The apartment was filled with life at the start of summer, but by September, the excitement had come and gone. I was back to the cold and early nights. I spent most of my time at home since going out cost money. I baked two-tiered cakes and played video games, I watched countless hours of TV and realised that I really liked Australian sitcoms. I watered my plants diligently and volunteered at a local soup kitchen to get out of my head.

I felt my world get so small. I had a small group of friends in Bristol but no one close enough to call on a random Friday night to hang out with, everyone had to be booked two weeks in advance. I would go days without speaking to anyone in real life. I believed there was a ghost in the apartment because one single flower fell out of a tall vase and I just could not explain how it could have fallen out.

The house was almost always cold as I waited and waited for that god damn visa to arrive so I wouldn’t have to deal with all the anxiety of being in limbo.

–

When the news came that my visa was finally approved, I started work the next day. I worked remotely from my living room in Bristol and travelled to the London office every now and then. It was a complex product and a growing company, so that took up much of my time and brain space. I was so happy to be able to use my skills again.

Just as Bristol and my little apartment was starting to feel like a home, I decided to move to London.

While it was going to be difficult to move, the pros outweighed the cons. The commute to London and back was exhausting and expensive, I didn’t have much of a support network in Bristol, and the buses were always late. It took me almost 9 weeks to find a place and move to London, just as my one-year lease was up in April 2023.

My last meal in my apartment was fried chicken from the shop around the corner, which I ate while soaking in the bath with a glass of wine.

–

I’ve been in London for a year now, but I find myself reminiscing about those long and windy walks along the Avon River, or a picnic by College Green, or lying on the grass at Clifton Down listening to a podcast episode about Cher.

I look back on that year and I still can’t believe so much happened in such a short time. My year in Bristol was tough and at times incredibly lonely. But Bristol led me to bigger and better things and for that, I will always be grateful.