Homesick - Malaysian no more?

Recently at work I was browsing through some blogs (yes, at work, shhhh!) and I came across this guy, Smashpop, a friend of Skyler's, just came back from Melbourne from a holiday.


As I scrolled past all the familiar pictures of Melbourne City, Crown, and even Sofia's (haha), I just felt a huge pang of homesickness which took me by surprise. How can it even be homesickness if I'm not from there in the first place? What would be a more suitable word? Memories? Nostalgia? Psychosis?


Some of my best times in my life were in Melbourne. I remember all those pig-out sessions at Sofia's, Lygon Street, and various Italian eateries. I remember the pizza shop near my old place on Koonawarra Street at Clayton run by a genuine Italian husband and wife... everytime I walked in it was a bon giurno! and a cheerful ciao! when I left.


Melbourne CBD was a change of pace, quite refreshing after the general quietness of the suburbs. Everyone's just rushing around, and there was so much to see. A nice hotdog with heaping piles of sauerkraut on it from Queen Victoria's, some really tasty noodles in Chinatown, fish and chips for $2 in The Crown... man... those were the days.


I remember heading up to Mount Dandenong and just enjoying the view... then having a nice meal of steak and eggs with a beer, enjoying the view from a pub. And Healesville, where I had my first encounter of a koala kind. They stink, literally. So do penguins, which I met at Phillip Island. I've come to a conclusion that the cuter an animal is, the more likely it is to smell bad.

Not forgetting all my friends back there... my cell group members, my university buddies, my old churchmates... so long ago... it's been a year as of Monday. I arrived in Melbourne on the 4th of July, 2004, left on the 4th of July, 2005, and now it's the 7th of July, 2006. 2 years, just like that. It seems like only yesterday.

I'm homesick for Melbourne. Does that make any sense? Probably I just wasn't there long enough to be disillusioned... :)