Sitting in Heathrow lounge sipping my second glass of orange juice and finishing my oatmeal for very late breakfast, as I went through deleting old messages in my blackberry I mirrored back at what I have experienced for the past 10 days in London. I could feel my lips curling into a smile and my mind goes thinking, “That’s what I called a trip!”

It started with arriving on Wednesday 29 March in a rainy night, my life has gone into series of tour to the museums and visiting old buildings. My eyes were adjusted to see the leafless tree and neat row of red bricks houses. My foot were trained to have a long walk and my nose were bleeding from cold weather. I thought that this must be how it feels like when you changed from human to vampire (read: Interview with the Vampire), everything looks new and it was truly fascinating. The sight of the people towering around me hurrying they way to go to some place else, hearing so many languages in so many accents being spoken at once, battling the chilly winds and numb fingers whilst fiddling through layers of clothes, navigating around this beautiful old city trying to comprehend the map and most of all, feel the friendliness of the Londoners which I thought I would never be able to experience.

It was more than once I was moved at the thoughtfulness of some Londoners who approached me to find out whether I was lost and need some help. And I was indeed lost having to travel all by my self for the first couple of days.

I will never forget how a pretty young girl with dark long hair came and informed me that I waited in the wrong bus stop, my mind goes to a darling old lady who paid for my bus ticket when she knew that I did not have coins (nor realise that my oyster ticket actually can also be used to pay bus!) and my thought flew to a UPS guy who unfolded his map to show me the way.

I have some back up though from a dear friend of mine who let me use his flat as base camp and a group of Indonesian youngsters (when I said young usually it means that they are around my age) who’d taken the liberty to take me into their responsibility and showed me around. Because of them I have managed to see places whose my boss in London will not be able to see it in a year! My list goes from British Museum, Tate Britain, Madame Tussauds, Riding the London Bus, London Eye, Oxford Circus, Piccadily Circus, Trafalgar Square, National Gallery (twice!), Tower of London, Tate Modern, Bull Ring in Birmingham (yup, I travelled all the way up to Birmingham), and series of very interesting culinary experience.

I surprisingly managed to work in the middle of this journey (oh before I forgot, that’s actually why I ever come to London - sorry, boss) and met my colleagues in London who are also nothing but nice and helpful and kind despite of what some of my ungrateful colleagues said about them. We had good dinner and good laugh. It was fascinating how different a perspective can be and yet how fundamentally similar they actually are.

At the end of the day, I feel a bit sad to leave. But I missed my family very much, I don’t think I can stay back for another day. This must have been feel like to be an expatriate. Once you grew fond of something, you must leave for something better.

Now whenever I look up at the blue sky above, I will always remember of how different things run in other part of the world and yet, how similar life actually is wherever you are. People are the same, they different with each other and they contributed to your life in their own way.

So Grace, Benny, Chandra, Lucy, Ronald, Djatu, Dedi, Djohan and Arryati if you read this…this post is for you. Thanks for making my trip wonderful and memorable.