The First Time
It was a windy day in Los Angeles, and I had just been on a 20 hours of no sleep and crappy airlines food and this guy sitting next to me who couldn’t stop talking about where he’s been in the world. It was more like a show-and-tell because there he was with his passport showing every single page with immigration stamps on it (while all I could think of was: “When is this guy gonna shut up?” I’m still not ready to listen to another line of: “here’s where I went skiing in Swiss, and here’s when I traveled to Spain.”)
I was tired, not feeling really well actually, but still when I got off the airplane, and walked into the huge Tom Bradley International Airport, there’s this sudden rush of energy charging inside of me. The first time I saw a Spanish cleaning lady, the first time I saw a huge African-American police officer, the first time I held a quarter in my hand, the first time I walked out of the airport building and breathe the city of angels’s cold summer. That was the first time that I traveled to a foreign ground.
And there’s always something so ethereal about the first time you do something. Somehow, no matter how small it is, you just remember every single feeling and sensation as you experienced it. Sometimes down to the very minutes and seconds that it happened. On that day in the summer of 1995, I remember everything like it was yesterday. The tingling feeling on my face as a breeze of clear Los Angeles air touched it. This weird adjustment in my ears and my brain as I caught another line and another line and then another line of people speaking in foreign language around me. The sensation is eternal. That’s what I love the most about traveling: you will always have many first times that leave you tingling with excitement.
But of course, you don’t have to get on a plane or hop in a bus and travel somewhere new to experience those first times. There were all around us. The first time you saw the man that you later fall in love with. The first time you heard him laugh. The first time you tasted Indian food. The first time you ate sushi. The first time you drive a go-kart. The first time you fell off a tree. The first time you heard the cry of the child that you just gave birth to. The first your own baby touched your finger. The first time you bungee-jumped. You, and I, remember these first times like you remember to breathe. It’s funny how our brain works, isn’t it? I don’t even remember where I put my pen that I just had a second ago, but I do recollect the first time I saw the ocean (1981, I was only four years old, our family just moved to a small town called Tanjung Gading as my dad worked there, and on the first weekend my dad took me and my brother to see the company’s harbor. Clear, deep, dark blue ocean around me, with some groups of ubur-ubur floating on the water). Remember it like it was just this morning.
A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to experience a whole new first time (yeah, lucky is the word. You’ll understand why as you read through this). The first time I was admitted to a hospital, the first time I was injected with real needles, the first time I was head-scanned, the first time I was infused, and the first time I went under the knife. As some of you might have heard, I had a nose surgery called septoplasty to fix the deviated septum of my nose that had been causing me frequent problems (to put it mildly). The first time I lost my consciousness, and the first time I woke up from anaesthesia (which was hell! Thank God I had genius doctors and surgeon who left me with no visible scar whatsoever).
Don’t you just love those first times? The good ones, yeah for sure, but also the bad ones (which of course, you wish will always be the first time and no second or third time). Because in moments like now, when I’m sitting in my car with my eyes closed as we cruised the impossible traffic of Ramadhan afternoon, after a long tiring day at work, I still have a hint of smile on my face, recollecting some of those first times from the back of my mind. You now what I’m thinking of? The first time I … oh, well, that memory is too private to be shared here 
So which first time put a smile on your face today?
