That’s how I decided to come home. Or something like that. Mostly.

I’ve always wondered if it is indeed the most natural thing to do, ya’know, studying in Australia and getting a PR and settling down. Seems like a rite of passage of sorts, for almost everyone I know who got the same experience as I. Of the many nationalities represented in Oz’s international student population, that idea seemed to some extent, very prevalent among Malaysians. Come to think of it, it’s like a culture even.

Malaysian reasoning behind that definitely holds water. Yes, cause and effect. Voting with your feet. Compared in relative terms there are definitely more reasons to stay than not. Great country, great weather, fresh seafood, the prevailing rule of law (mostly) and a decent shot at life despite being born overseas. The satisfaction of one’s thymos! One would indeed be weird in not wanting to live in one of the most livable cities in the world –Sydney- a place I called home for a good four years.

Being at the cusp of full fledged adulthood, the whole thing of “what are you going to do with your life” was a reoccurring theme in conversations amongst my peers and immediate circle of friends. We’d recognized that at school, we’d live from exam to exam. From vacation to vacation. From party to party. But in ___ years time, those markers won’t be there anymore. After graduation, the restraints come off and your life runs off into a big empty field and among us, we’d all shoot off into different directions.

In second year uni after I came across this whole thing about ‘backwards induction’ somewhere in a class I sort of liked. Something about reasoning backwards- from the end of a problem, and determining a sequence of optimal actions to solve that problem most effectively. I guess you could say at that point, i identified “your(my) future” as the problem.

So that’s when I thought about it. The “end” would be my deathbed. What would I want to be able to think and be proud of at that moment before I depart the world? Alex the G said, empty handed into this world I came and empty handed out of this world I go. Undoubtedly, he was a very very rich man at the time, and even today, obscene wealth is very desirable. But I figured, wealth couldn’t be the end because that would leave any means to it justifiable. Wealth had to be the by-product of another purpose, if indeed it was wealth that anyone would seek, right? (Indeed I was young at the time.)

I remembered Mother Teresa. I remembered, in an interview, when the interviewer lamented upon her wrinkled hands and worn out body and that she answered that she was thankful for her body, as a tool, had allowed her to carry out all the great works that she had accomplished. That she knew that because her body was worn out, it was well used, and she could go, knowing she had done her best.

And so it was. I would give going back a shot. To do something about the perverse trend that made it ok to condemn a society without doing anything about it. I resolved to do something I could be proud off at my deathbed, for myself but more importantly for the lives that I could possibly impact in a positive way (like I said, I was young). I knew what was wrong with society. Indeed, all of us do, and so, we work to improve on it. For me, the first step was to remove that big geographical impediment to that end I sought.

That’s how I decided to come home. Or something like that. Mostly.

Sern-Li
Sydney, 2004 - 2007