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Humble Beginnings

I grew up in Penang, which was a quaint small town in those days, in a lower-middle-class family. My parents never had any form of motorised transport. They went around on public transport and bicycles. My father was a schoolteacher, and my mother was a homemaker who did some freelance work as a seamstress. We could not afford our own house and lived in my grandmother’s house until I started work and could take up a mortgage for a small house.

Education

My early education was at St Xavier’s Institution, a Catholic brothers’ mission school. My mother was draconian about education, and I suppose I did have something more than air between my ears. I did very well in school, and for O-Levels in 1974, I was among the top 5 students in Malaysia. I wanted to be an engineer, but my parents would not hear of it, as top students should study to become doctors. I could not imagine the rest of my life tending to sick people, as I was rather squeamish at the sight of blood. After a very difficult negotiation, we agreed that I would study to be an accountant. In those days, there were only 2 chartered accountants in Penang, and they both lived in mansions. There were not many jobs for engineers in those days in Penang as nothing much was being built.
I had no idea then what I was getting myself into. From a top student in O-Levels, I ended up as a marginal student at university. In those days, Australia and New Zealand gave free education to selected students from Malaysia, which was an underdeveloped country. I managed to get offered a place both at Melbourne University and the University of Auckland. On my father’s salary, there was no way that my parents could afford my living expenses overseas. One of my uncles had to provide a personal guarantee and I ended up going to New Zealand on the misguided notion that I could not work as a student in Australia.
My father reached the age of 50 at that time and could withdraw one-third of his provident fund, which paid for my one-way ticket to Auckland, and six months’ living expenses. I did not do well in university because I really did not like most of the subjects for my Bachelor of Commerce degree. But those three years of struggle as a poor student with up to three part-time jobs at the same time, presented some of the most profound learning for me.
I did finally make it as a Chartered Accountant but never got to live in a mansion. But as it turned out, taking accountancy was a good thing. With a solid science background from school, and a passion for science, my career path as a finance person in an industrial/engineering environment was rather stellar.

Family

I married at the age of 28, which was rather late in the 1980s in Malaysia, especially since I graduated rather early at the age of 21 and started my corporate life at the age of 22.
But it was really worth the wait. Gen and I were married in 1985, and during COVID-19 in 2020, we had what can best be described as a several-year-long second honeymoon after 34 years of marriage. It is so easy when you marry your soulmate.

Our daughter Ashley was born in 1988 in Hong Kong and married to Dr. Bradley Elphinstone (no, he is not a medical doctor). Our son Timothy came two years later in Melbourne, Australia.