As I am sitting here typing this – I am wondering: How in God’s green earth is my body able to stay healthy in the choking haze in Malaysia and the moment I come to Melbourne, Australia with its clean air and great weather – I fall sick?
Have we Malaysians evolved to be like cockroaches, so used to dirt and filth that our bodies no longer can handle cleanliness and it just goes into panic mode the moment it cannot breathe in poisonous air?
Or is the weather in Australia overrated, or in some essence the entire concept of migrating to Australia a flawed and overrated one?
I’ve spoken to many good friends here who had uprooted and migrated to Australia and every one of them swear that the migration was the best thing ever and leaving behind Malaysia was the greatest decision they ever made and anyone living back in Malaysia are definitely in trouble. Some compare Malaysia to what China was in terms of the Chinese Civil War that caused a lot of our grandpapas to come in boats to Malaysia to escape the communists. In fact, my grandfather was dumped here when he was around 10 by his father, who immediately took the same boat to go back to China.
I always wondered why Malaysian chinese would still hold on to the ideal that China is their country and become so proud to be called ‘Chinese’, when the only association they have with China are the toys they buy for their kids.
Anyway – back to these Australian immigrants – sometimes, they are so happy that they are in the land of milk and honey that they try to convince everyone else to leave Malaysia and start their own settlement in Australia – as first gen immigrants and the usual reason is “Do it for your kids”, as if staying in Malaysia would cause our kids to turn into slaves and barbaric cannibals.
So I decided to do a series of Australian Migration articles on why its good or bad.
Am I an authority in this? Well, I studied in Australia for 2 years and lived in Australia. I’ve been to every Australian large city (except for Adelaide), and mostly, I was a signature away from being a PR. Yes, a couple of years back, I actually went through the entire process of getting PR in Australia – I paid a total of around RM12,000 ( a lot for a guy who only earned around 3,800RM that time per month) to the lawyer and went through quite a lot, up to the english test and according to the lawyer, I just had to submit in one final form and she guaranteed success. She desperately chased me for it and I told her, I chickened out. She said the 12K was non-refundable but if I decided to take up the PR again, she will give me a discount on future fees.
I never spoke to her again and lapsed my application. And lost 12K.
People thought I was stupid and retarded. But to me, I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to let go of this country called Malaysia. People say, you don’t need to – you can put a foot in here and there and just glide around and get PR for your kids. But there are certain obligations like going to Australia and living there for 2 out of 5 years blah blah etc. I didn’t even love Australia the way my other peers did. I was ok and contented staying there – I generally don’t have too much emotion on where I stay, I can adapt to US and India if needed; but I didn’t love or hate Australia at all – it was just ‘meh’ on my end.
So how the hell is this related to golf?
It’s not, it’s just verbal vomit on my end because I am wondering what so great about Australia when I have a stuffed nose and generally a bad headache from my sinus and having a great cup of coffee next to me. It’s just the good and bad of Australia.
For the next post, I will break down the measurements of quality of life, Gilagolf metrics and judge for ourselves whether Australia is better than Malaysia in all the aspects that is important.