New city, new friend. Family history, old friends.

Having just moved to the UK, I grabbed the first job I could get: waitressing at the local pub. There was a girl that came in regularly and one evening she came in with her sister. We got chatting and discovered that we were both half Malaysian and half British (they Scottish, me English), immediately we hit it off! It was as though we found our Malaysian mix posse in London!

One weekend, I was invited up to their family house in Scotland for a party. It was very last minute and train fares weren’t looking too great. I wasn’t planning on going but the good old ‘why not?!’ came about and next thing I know I was on a train heading to the Scottish countryside for the first time! It was beautiful… nothing I had ever seen before. It was so remote from our Malaysian-ness yet it felt like family because we were together.

On the way back from this lovely weekend, I caught a ride back with one of the sisters. We decided to take the scenic route and spontaneously stop by my Granny’s house in Yorkshire. When we arrived, Granny being all excited asked us about our weekend, I was dying for the loo and had to dash off. When I got back, I discovered that my friend’s late Granny and my Granny were very old and dear friends. I couldn’t believe it! To travel 9,000 miles half way across the world to meet a stranger who was mixed like me and discover if anything that our British families were great friends.

The rest of the ride home we kept ping pong-ing between ‘that’s so weird!’ and ‘that’s so cool!’.

I’m so grateful that we took that little detour because  if we didn’t, we would have been friends all this while without knowing that our families have shared a lil’ special history together! Sometimes I think you are just meant to meet some people and in this case, it is so true!

Submitted by Isabel