Meet the nerdling.

Hi. My name is Raihana. I’m 26 years old.

I was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and raised in the relatively quiet town of Subang Jaya by an overachieving career woman who encouraged my bookish tendencies and tolerated my incessant singing.

This one tiny fact – that my mother is an overachieving career woman – explains a hell of a lot about me. Seriously.

At the age of 19, I moved to Melbourne, Australia to attend university, and while I never planned it that way, I ultimately ended up contributing to the Great Malaysian Brain Drain.

Oops. (Sorry I’m not sorry.)

I’ve lived in Melbourne for a grand total of seven years now. I love my life here, but I think it’s time to leave. I’ve got my sights set on San Francisco, California – with a little bit of luck, I’ll be moving there within the next year. It’s one of my Big Scary Goals. I seem to have a lot of them.

I have a degree in Economics and Finance, but I work in IT audit and consulting for one of the Big 4 audit firms. I get a lot of funny looks when I tell people that. And then I tell them that I’m really a writer at heart, or maybe I start rambling on about all the artsy, geeky things I’m into, and their jaws fall right off.

I’ve become very accustomed to hearing the words “What the hell are you doing in this firm?!”

I don’t have any satisfying answers to that question, by the way.

The Blog

“I Am Not Lost” is my little corner of the Internet, a space for me to try to Figure Things Out (which is the main reason why I write). I’m currently learning how to be a real adult, how to create the life I want to live, and how to navigate the, uh, interesting world of 20-something dating, how to stay positive in a world teeming with negativity and pessimism, and I talk about all of these things here.

This is where I try to explain what it’s like to be a single expatriate searching for a home.

And on a lighter note, this is also where I get to be silly and overly enthusiastic about very geeky and nerdy things like neuroscience and Doctor Who. For realsies.

Other Highly Relevant Details

– I have a strange accent that no one can identify. The Americans think I’m one of them, but not really, the Australians know I’m not one of them but have lived here long enough to more or less pass for an Aussie, and the Malaysians just know that I don’t live there anymore, because the slang I use is embarrassingly out of date.

I usually explain it like this: “Parents, this is what happens when you raise a child in Malaysia on a steady, unchecked diet of American TV shows and movies, and then ship that child off to university in Australia. You have been warned.”

– I really, really like to read. As far as I’m concerned, the happiest place on earth is not Disneyland – it’s a quiet bookstore.

– Having said that, I really want to visit Disneyland again.

– I’m a yogi with atrocious eating habits. Doritos for dinner, anyone?

– I really like coffee.

– I will probably curl up and die if you took my iPod away from me and forced me to do anything – ANYTHING – without music.

– I worship at the altar of Joss Whedon: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my teenage television obsession.

– I own a TARDIS-shaped money box.

– I believe in silver linings, and in being very careful about the stories we tell ourselves, because the stories we tell tend to come true.

“Never say anything about yourself that you do not want to come true.” – Brian Tracy.

– I believe in kindness and honesty, and so I try to live by these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson –

“Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.”

– Nine times out of ten, I am going to be running late to meet you.

And if you would like to stalk me…

I’m @raihanaaaa on Twitter and Instagram. I have a slightly neglected Tumblr. You can e-mail me at raihanaaaa [at] gmail [dot] com. Say hi – I’d love to hear from you.