I like to wander around exploring new things, seeing new places meeting new people. It helps keep my mind fresh and I usually end up in strange situations. I’ve had many adventures wandering around and I’ve made new, amazing friends from almost every continent on this small blue planet of ours.
I try to think about the time I first started to wander but my mind is blank. Honestly I’ve been wondering around ever since I was a little white baby.
The funny thing is, while my random wandering and exploring will occasionally lead to dead ends, sometimes I end up doing things I’d never dreamed of. Once I was wandering around in my old university and I accidentally joined the Japanese society (long story tell you another time, involves a geisha and a lonely squirrel). I saw the Japanese society in a pub and I overheard them talking about going to karaoke. I was bored so I randomly approached the head honcho and asked if I could tag along. He said yes!
I made friends that day. Soon I would attend their annual random dress up party. I went as Dr House.
I also made Chinese friends at the society.
A year later, a friend at the Japanese society told me about a summer school in a South Korean university, Chonbuk. It would last 2 and a half weeks and I’d be learning Korean for 2 hours everyday.
Now I wasn’t familiar with Korean culture, fun fact, I knew more about North Korea than I did South Korea. Still I had yet to wander around South Korea, and I could get a discount for the summer school because of the university I was attending. So I said Yes.
Korea was great. I made friends from almost every continent on Earth.
Once I was wandering around the campus of the Korean university I was at when I met my friend Cesar. He told me about how a bunch of guys were going to get together and play football (Soccer). He invited me along. Now I was an asthmatic who wasn’t particularly athletic (at the time) or very good at football, so of course I said yes.
As you can see wandering around has led to me having experiences I never would have dreamed I have. I mean I never dreamed I’d end up in South Korea playing football with a bunch of Americans and Europeans while girls cheered us on. All this and many more adventures happened because I randomly wandered around and asked if I could get involved. I would always wander around by myself, like the Doctor, because other friends weren't as curious as me.
When I got accepted into the University of Birmingham to do my Computer Science masters, I promised myself I wouldn’t change. I would keep wondering and see where life would take me.
I remember wandering around the annual Societies fair and just taking leaflets from every society that offered them. I have a collection leaflets with everything from the Chinese society to the psychedelics society (don’t ‘officially’ do drugs just discuss why we should be allowed to do them). After I got my leaflets, I got to wandering. I went to the Chinese society and got invited to a Halloween part they were hosting.
I went to the comedy society and performed stand up:
I’d later continue to perform stand up at different societies. If you were hosting an open mic I would be there. I would randomly wander in, tell some jokes and just leave without saying a word to anyone. I performed stand up at a Malaysian talent show and I did it at the Disney Society’s open mic night. I was like ghost, just showing up out of the blue, doing something cool and disappearing before anyone could talk to me. I even entered Chortle’s stand up competition.
During the Christmas period, I was struggling with a coding problem one night and I decided to focus on something else. I found a society on the Student guild website called the “Toastmasters”. It sounded like a cult but I thought I’d give it a chance. It was a public speaking society so it couldn't be too bad. As fate would have it their next meeting was due to start in 1 hour, so I just randomly wondered in to their meeting. Going to Toastmasters would later turn out to be one best decisions I have made. Toastmasters deserves it’s own story so I won’t go into too many details. I would later attend every meeting and would go on to win for best speech in two of their weekly competitions.
My performance in the annual internal competition would lead to me along with 4 other Toastmasters to represent the University of Birmingham at Cardiff university’s public speaking competition.
One of the final things I did was on March 31st 2017. It was the president of the Chinese society’s birthday and he was going to host a mini concert where he and some volunteers would perform for an audience before everyone went to Karaoke. I should mention the president of the Chinese society is this popular guy with an amazing singing voice. Guy looks like he was part of a boy band. I was one of two non Chinese people invited to the event so I was stood out like an…Indian guy at a Chinese party. Something prompted me to ask the president if I could join him on stage and sing a Chinese song at the event. I didn’t know any Chinese songs and I was sure to embarrass myself, but I wanted to challenge myself. Surprisingly the president agreed so I would end up singing “Tong Hua” (Fairy tale) in front of 60 Chinese students. I got told I did a pretty good job although I think people were more impressed an Indian guy was speaking Chinese.
Looking back now I can’t help but feel happy at all the memories I made. Dear reader you might be looking at the photos and thinking “Wow this guy must have a lot of balls, he has no fear” but that isn’t true at all. Fact is I was always nervous. I remember feeling nervous asking the president if I could perform at his birthday event. Ironically I used to suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, even today I can feel the ghost of those diseases influencing my own psyche. But despite the nerves and the fear, I would never let it stop me. I would force myself to get up and perform or approach someone. I consistently got out of my comfort zone because I wanted to wonder. I wanted to see what would happen. And this practice has allowed me to have some great experiences and meet some amazing people who have made me a better person. People who I would never have met if I hadn’t wandered around.
So I encourage you dear reader, get out of you comfort zone and wander. See things and talk to people.
Take it from me, you never know where you’ll end up.
