Spent four hours earlier today at the Jewish Vocational Service downtown with some good men from Somalia, Sudan, Guinea, and Haiti.

Most of the people I tutor, from different nations around the world, already speak two or three languages fluently and are now learning or improving another. That's diligence. I can't even be bothered to improve my rusty Malay. I’m not around Malaysians much so the only time I really use Malay is when talking to fam.

But there I am in one of life's many ironic instances. I am running with many other people, from different parts of the world, only we are running in the opposite direction.

I once ran in the same direction, almost a decade earlier. Not for the same reasons, unless what some of them felt was mere disillusionment, besides escaping the abuses of their own people who held you back from progressing and evolving as a person. There we are, prompted by our own personal reasons, struggling to integrate, and to escape.