When I first came to England, the most immediate assault on my senses was the food. I loved the novelty of English food at first, the cheerful omnipresence of potatoes (mashed, boiled, fried), the eternally boiled (never steamed, fried or spiced) vegetables, and the virtuousness of the salad bar. The Yorkshire puddings, the rice puddings, the "winter delight" pies… The custard, the scones with real cream and jam, the delightful deluge of soups; I was immersed in 'England'.
As a Muslim, I wasn't able to sample the full culinary range, but I was assured that the Sunday roasts and shepherd pies were far and away the best items of the week. And well do I remember the frantic runs back from Brome House to the lunchroom to grab the hot chips before the uncivilized young-guns scoffed them all down.
It was a few weeks before the novelty of the food waned. Then I began to notice a few cracks, mostly around the stitches of my waistline, and a couple of flaws. The spinach was soaking in its own juices, the chow-mein was actually just stirfried spaghetti; I realised that there was a reason why the oldtimers rained salt and pepper liberally down on everything. Then I went to London for half-term, and my tastebuds exploded in rebellion.
It had been weeks since I had eaten rice, meat or anything remotely spicy. On the first night I gorged on Bruneian food (thankfully you can find anything in London) and paid for it the next morning with a thoroughly unsettled stomach! The spices weren't just stirring up my dulled tastebuds, but also the feeling of contentment I had so carefully cultivated those first few weeks. To smell that particularly Bruneian blend of ginger and red chicken, to see the thin layer of oil pooling in the dips of the decidedly unhealthy sauces, reminded me of home so badly that it was extremely painful to leave London. But leave I did, shunning access to all of these things that would help me to recreate home, for the only thing vaguely Asian was the MSG-saturated takeaway on the walk into town.
It was a tough couple of weeks after that. After having been reminded so strongly of home, it was hard to settle down again to the smooth blandness of the unsympathetic potatoes. But in a way, being so completely removed from anything familiar helped me to accept that I wasn't home, and that studying in England was a long-term commitment rather than a holiday-type jaunt. I had to accept the soggy cabbage along with the apple pie, and the spinach and cheese feta along with the… I think they said it was 'squash'.
All in all, coming to university in York has helped me: campus life is diverse and my fellow Bruneians are (slightly) more numerous here. Here I can recreate my own version of Brunei with Bruneian friends, but the aim is achieving a balance between hiding in that familiarity and getting along and making friends with all my British-born flatmates. I can make the choice to take the (halal) cottage pie and leave the cheesy beans and have acar as a side dish. And when I go back to Brunei for good, during one hot, humid day at the beach, I will think wistfully of the freezing cold seaside of England and the taste of fish and chips (liberally salted).
