Do you mean what you ask or are you just BS-ing me..

There is a dilemma every year I come home. A lot of people make it very difficult to want to stay for a long time because of the questions they ask, the pretence they put up and the false graciousness they try to portray when they perfectly well know in the next few seconds, they'll turn around and whisper about you behind your back.

In the case of "Surviving Bitches 101", it is cautioned that when people ask you anything along the lines of "What's being overseas like?", you should make no mention of the nice weather and the vast opportunities (although I'm obviously making that point here). Instead, you should make like it's no big deal and for good measure, profess that you'd much rather be here because people are friendlier.

When responding to this question in genuine fashion (none of which they really want to know), it does not mean we dislike Miri or think it worst. It is our hometown, it is our family and in some case, good friends who do not take the same liberty as you do in devaluing our experiences abroad and only wish us the very best while trusting that we do not ever forget that the strongest of a lifetime of friendships is built here in this once small town. It is precisely people like YOU that make living here unpleasant.

We realize there is no win-win situation when you put forth this question. When we answer you openly and objectively about the 11 months a year we spend across the big bad oceans, you perceive us as abandoning our roots for greener grass. I do not want to pretend that there are not countless of gains I have made in the country Down Under, but I want to tell you that leaving our parents at home for the most part of the year is not an easy decision and often is the decision made to stay abroad is based on repaying their generosity and in most cases, sacrifice. Do not think for one moment that when we start saying FUCK we have forgotten how to say Chaocibai with the capital C.

And do not be under the false assumption that living the high life is what we are doing over there. You see the difference in income and fixate on that because our government has squandered everything we earned for the past 50 years. This is not our fault. You see the difference in manner and make fun of improved English because the education system required no such fluency during our school years. This is not our fault. What you do not see, is the rent raised so sky-high it'll surpass the Twin Towers soon, and also the bills, ridiculous fuel charges, AUD5 minimum per hour parking and for those of us who work exhausting 8 to 5 day jobs without the courtesy kopitiam break, 'snake-ing' and expansive lunch hours to go home with takeaway costing 18% of the income we make per month. To be fair (in your backstabbing) language, this is not anyone's fault but our own for the choice we made to stay in someone else's land. In places where you have to fight because you are also minority, because they cannot understand your accent and because no one else will fight for you, just as no one does for you in Malaysia. But then this is the path we have chosen and are happy with, we only wonder what is it that you regret about the path you have chosen for yourself to have to kick us in the behind and give us grief every opportunity you have.

So the other alternative is to say as little as possible when you pose that question. This response I know has and will elicit opinions that I "diao ge" as you put it. But by now I have learnt that you do not really want to hear how good the weather is over there.