When joining the work force five years ago after graduating from engineering school, there were a lot of promising tales told to us by those who had already made it. Success at the time seemed guaranteed, and comfortable living was a given. We were told that the opportunities were as wide as the ocean. Little did we know, that we were just like freshly hatched Penyu 1 naively rushing towards the ocean, not knowing what was waiting to feast on us.
Within five years, my one-meal-per-hour paycheck has increased to two meals per hour. It seemed that the compensation we received was almost guaranteed to double every five years. However, that was not the case according to our senior colleagues. Corporate salaries tend to follow a logistic growth pattern 2 rather than exponential growth — slower to increase, but once momentum is set, the growth rate stutters.
It was sad to see many potential prospects were denied comfort. The fiat money model we are using favors those who are determined. I wanted to eat steak too once in a while, after doing the same amount of work as people in the US or France. Ten to twelve hours of work a day in Malaysia does not buy the same quality of life, just because the Ringgit is perceived weaker against the Dollar.
In the south, around 250-thousand people bridging border to Singapore everyday just to make a living, taking jobs much below their potentials just so they can have a piece of paper printed with Yusof Ishak’s portrait 3 at the end of the month. Somehow this is how the movement of money happens today. This was also a strong case for me, so I decided to leave for a foreign land for my own printed paper bank notes.
Getting a job in Japan was accidental after plenty of calls made to many companies across the globe. It just made it more sentimental as if Japan chose me despite rejections from the rest of the world. Leaving the airport was very emotional but the one way air ticket was too expensive to throw away, it took one-tenth of my entire life savings. Another forty percent goes to securing a place to live in Tokyo for a month or two, leaving just a small portion to buy my return in case things did not work out here.
It was autumn when I arrived. Everything was foreign here - language, people, environment, weather, buildings, and orders. As if stepping to a world where everything was done differently. It became overwhelming really quickly. However, the day was bright, my intentions were pure, and it was too late to turn back. So I started to walk forward.