December 9, 2011

• 4 years

  4 years have gone by since I’ve moved to Malaysia, yet I still feel that I’m in a transitional phrase. I still feel this constant struggle to strike a balance between the reality of my life and my naïve hopes for the future to be.

  A lot of things have happened in the past year. For starters, I started a relationship in mid 2010 with a very kind-hearted girl who has the heart and personality that reminds me of myself and my family. The relationship started out great like every other one but later became a constant struggle both physically and mentally. Half way through she moved to Singapore. In order to maintain the relationship we were flying to see each other almost every weekend, but there were these fundamental differences in our perspectives in life and in addition to my hot headed, non-negotiable nature, it just wasn’t going anywhere, so we ended it peacefully and now maintain our friendship to date.

  I’ve just finished attending my cousin’s wedding recently. The couple celebrated their marriage on the date of their 10^th anniversary. My cousin had devoted a very long time and effort to make it a spectacular wedding to be remembered a life time. It made me think a lot about myself, being 29 and still not knowing exactly where I’m headed and all.

  Marriage is not really my priority in life at this moment. I feel that even though I am already 29, I’m still a kid at heart. For the past 4 years I’ve been marching my way towards that stage in life where I feel I could take things to the next level, but somehow I’m just never there.

  My priority in life is to figure out how to make steady and sustainable income in the Bay Area or Taiwan. Bay Area is where I consider being my home, equal to my roots in Taiwan, but if I have to choose I will want to settle down in the Bay.

  During earlier phrase of my career in Malaysia, I’ve attempted many times to start and move my family business to the US in hopes to be able to make a living there. 3 years passed by to no avail – I learned that saying something is easy, doing it is hard, making it happen is even more difficult.  Slowly but surely, I learned to adjust my expectation and aim towards more realistic and attainable, though still difficult goals. Instead of creating and marketing a new brand of high-end supplement products, I figured why not just go with raw materials? So as it turns out, I focus all my energy and time at sourcing pure, natural honey supplies in bulk, instead of bottled goods. In late 2010 my company expanded to Vietnam for its abundant sources of honey.

  I saw lights at the end of the tunnel with this honey business. All of a sudden, all the marketing and business classes I took back in college started to make sense and became applicable. So after almost a year of prospecting, emailing, cold-calling, negotiating, visiting, and finally closing – I’ve finally managed to make successful deals with clients in the US. I thought I would be jumping up and down when the deals were made, but this wasn’t eBay where the buyer would buy my shoes and I’d ship them out – we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands worth of honey in 20’ containers being shipped across the Pacific Ocean from Vietnam to the US, facing potential scrutiny of the FDA and the USDA who can easily reject all of your containers, which not only costs you thousands of dollars but more importantly, destroy all of your works for the past year. And of course there were possible malicious clients who may cheat against you.

  Fortunately enough for me, none of that have happened. I feel extremely grateful that at least these first few shipments have gone by flawlessly with no significant troubles. For the first 3 years of my endeavor in business, I’ve gotten nothing but failures, day after day I questioned whether I should be doing what I was doing. But with the success of these first several deals, I felt that in my mind, this might be something I can do for the rest of my life. However, it’s ironic now that I have established a steady demand in the US, my supply doesn’t seem to catch up, so we will not be growing in this business as I’ve expected.

  With my father’s advice and encouragement, I’ve also diversified my effort in making income from US by investing in real estates. Buying properties was always a vaguely unattainable dream for me, until in 2010 I purchased my first small apartment unit in Taiwan. I guess for all the grudge and contempt for living in this shitty, uninspiring, rural area of Malaysia has helped tremendously in my savings account. Taking advantage of the economic crash in the States since 2008, houses in certain areas of California became insanely cheap and suddenly affordable to a guy like me. So in October this year, with the help my family as well as my savings, I’ve purchased my first property in the US. Even though I must say I’ve paid a great deal extra for damages and taxes that I’ve never foreseen, I can only hope that the rental income and hopefully the appreciation of the property will pay off – either way I guess it’s better than having my money sitting in the bank.

  So I guess that’s that in terms of what I’ve done to move towards my goal in 2011. My maturity and capability as a whole are still far behind my perceived self, I feel very uncertain for what the future will be. I somehow managed to accomplish most of the tasks I’ve set up for myself, but I have done very little in terms of the hopes and expectations that others have for me.

  As I am writing this at the office, two men are sitting behind me in a distance, pretending not paying attention to me, but at the same time I know very well that every single day they observe my behavior at work and at home, expecting and hoping for me to become what they thought would be an excellent leader of the company, or if not, at the very least a good salesman. I have failed them. My father and Mr. Wu – our factory manager and the key person who keeps this whole company together, are both thinking about retiring soon. My father is pushing 60s and his age is catching up to him; Mr. Wu is near 40 and has clinical depression. They both put their hopes at me in some way, expecting me to one day take over the company, but we all know deep inside that my heart simply isn’t here in Malaysia. If we were in Taiwan or US, maybe this could work. 4 years living in Malaysia with close to zero social life can really make a happy go easy guy like me somewhat depressed.

  Besides all the crimes, burglars, thieves and corrupted government in general, I’ve seen some dark shit in this place, primarily because of my exposure to the business world as well as getting acquainted to my ex-girlfriend, who is a Malaysian Chinese. I’ve seen things that I thought I’d only seen in dramas and movies – stuff that an average person may feel surprising to hear, but terrifying to see and even worse to be a part of. People who know me know that I’m one of those guys who are quite simple minded, naive, and straight forward. I hate phonies, I hate wannabes, I hate ignorant scumbags who wouldn’t think twice about fulfilling their needs at the expense of other people’s safety and wellbeing, I hate devious cunts who can’t put their money where their mouths are, and I’ve seen all of them here. I’ve seen “brothers” who on the surface would take a bullet for each other and as soon as you throw money or bitches in the middle, they’d happily be the first men to put the bullet in the head of the next guy. Hey, gotta survive right?
  

  I believe that people of this nature exist all over the world, but I’ve seen a higher concentration of those in Malaysia, particularly with Malaysian Chinese, or shall I say, Chinese in general? It doesn’t seem to matter how advance or developed a Chinese culture is developed, there are always these defense mechanisms deeply imprinted in these people’s minds for fear of losing everything. Life seems to be a big, fat but limited sale on a daily basis for some of these people (the irony). It’s not all just about money too, also trivial things like bus seats, cutting in line, asking for favor and think of excuses to not return one, fighting for little foods left in a buffet tray, all these stupid little shit.
  

  I understand that I may be generalizing a cultural phenomenon here to which some people may disagree with what I said. In fact, it irritates me that some people are still blind to this problem; or that these people tell me to “chill”, that that’s the way it is, if you don’t like it then get the fuck out. That is precisely the reason why I’m indeed, getting the fuck out. I have not asked anyone to agree with me, all I ask is for some people to open their eyes and see if they can spot this problem, and if you really can’t see the problem, chances are you ARE it.

  Anyways, I’ve developed and accumulated this contempt and anger at this place, in all fairness I am the one who should be responsible for the situation that I’ve created, and perhaps this is the reason why I cannot strike the balance between the reality of myself and my ideals. Without this balance, I cannot find peace of mind and give 100% to the things I do. Who knows? maybe if I were to move back to Taiwan or Bay Area right now, I’d still develop problems with what I once called “my home”.
  

  I wrote a whole bunch and can’t seem to come up with a conclusion. Well, I think that’s the reason why I’m just writing about whatever. I do know that I’m slipping, I’m falling, I can’t get up – but I gotta get up, getting back to my feet so I can tear shit up! One day, hopefully not too far away, I shall be able to look at this with a smile – preferably not drunk, but if I am, at least with red wine, not beer.

  Till next time.

  • 10:51 pm
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