By mid-February 2011, I had enough.
I had spent the past five months living in Taipei, learning Mandarin, and working as a part-time English teacher. But I couldn’t do it forever.
Deep down, I knew I was wasting my potential. Sure, I wanted to travel the world — but I also wanted to challenge myself, solve huge problems, and feel fulfilled.
Yet life at that point was certainly unfulfilling. My business muse collapsed, my employer demoted me, I couldn’t reenroll in my Chinese school, and my love life sucked.
Even though I lived in a phenomenal city with an amazing culture and nightlife, as a twenty-three year old, I had nothing to build upon for my future.
I knew what I had to do:
I had to get a real job.
[Note: In this story, I mostly use fake names. As you’ll soon find out, shit gets real.]
Part I: Leaving Taipei
I decided it was time to get back into finance — the industry I studied — and start looking for real work.
To stay abroad, I specifically targeted English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada because I wouldn’t have to deal with a language barrier.
One afternoon, I emailed an investment bank based in Sydney called KM Securites and, within a few hours, they replied and showed interest. Hallelujah!
The company listed countless deals they advised in and even boasted partners and board members all over the world. Wow, I thought, it looks phenomenal. Their President, Andrew Jeffries, emailed me and scheduled a chat.
We talked on the phone for 30 minutes and he seemed impressed with my answers and enthusiasm. He then talked about the role and what would be expected of me.
Their plan was simple: beginning mid-April, I would intern for three months unpaid at KM Securities and, if I performed well, they would agree to sponsor a Subclass 457 work visa and grant me a full-time position.
I couldn’t say “No,” could I? It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Work at an investment bank AND move to Australia? Crikey!
I had to do it. I had to take the chance to push my life and try something new.
Thankfully, my buddy in Sydney, Victor, generously offered to let me stay with him in his family for the duration of my internship.
Just in time, too, because I think my homestay “parents” were getting sick of me acting like Charlie Sheen, sleeping late and bringing home random girls.
Part II: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
Eighteen hours and one-stop over later, I arrived in Sydney, tired, smelly, and wrecked from the flight. Although this was the second time I flew from East Asia to Australia, the trek didn’t get easier.
Fortunately, I wasn’t hung over (like on my final flight from South Korea to Los Angeles), but after days and days of packing, that “unpleasantness” at my farewell party, crossing the equator, and a nine-hour stop over at Kuala Lumpur, I felt exhausted.
Thankfully, Grace, my Mom’s high school friend, picked me up that morning and took me to her house. I peeled off my clothes, took a much-needed shower, and stumbled into their guestroom for a quick nap. That “quick nap” lasted almost five hours and I woke up feeling like I got shot with an elephant tranquilizer.
The next morning, I caught a ride with Victor into the city and spent the entire day touring Sydney and revisiting all the amazing places that captivated me the first time I visited. I walked through the morning sun to Circular Quay, admiring the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, and glorious skyline.
“I fucking did it,” I thought to myself.
All that hard work, all that struggle, all the lost loves, all the failed job opportunities, and all the inner turmoil was all worth it because now I was here in the most iconic city in the Southern Hemisphere — thousands of miles from home — ready to win my job and christen a new life.
On Monday, 25 April, I shot out of bed at 6:45am excited to be starting the next chapter in my life: Australia. The trip took about one hour every morning — I’d take a bus that stopped right in front of Victor’s house to Burwood Station.
From there, I would take the express CityRail train into the Central Business District (CBD) and exit at Hunter Station.
As I walked, I gazed at the twists of steel and concrete above and felt confident with my new tailored suit I bought before I left Taipei, a pocket square, and a slick haircut. “I’m ready for this,” I said to myself as I marched closer towards Chifley Tower.
Inside the lobby of Chifley Tower, I stepped inside the elevator and got off on the twenty-ninth floor foyer. “Wow…”
From the panoramic glass windows, you could see everything: the Opera House, the Royal Botanical Gardens, and the Eastern suburbs, all the way to Bondi Beach and the Pacific Ocean.
“Good morning,” I said to the secretary with a smile.
“Good morning! Who are you here to see?”
“Andrew Jeffries with KM Securities.”
“Great, just one moment. Have a seat, if you’d like.”
I sat on of one of the beautiful couches that overlooked the breathtaking scenery and I nervously waited for someone to open the doors and welcome me into the office.
“They’ll send someone here to get you,” the secretary added after a quick phone call.
“Oh?”
“Yes. The office isn’t here, so they sent someone to bring you.”
“Oh.” I paused. “Okay. Um, do you know where the office is?”
“I’m not sure.”
What the hell? I thought. I sat back on the couch and twiddled my thumbs while checking my watch and cell phone like I had OCD. Fifteen minutes passed. Just then, a tall, heavy-set guy with glasses walked out of the elevator and strolled to the secretary’s desk.
“Sir?” the secretary alerted me. “The person from KM Securities is here.”
He wore dress pants and a button-up shirt with a five o’clock shadow that looked tattooed onto his face. It turned out, Pete, was a 21-year-old kid from the Middle East who grew up in Australia.
He was still in university at that time doing an internship with the KM Securities and getting a nice resume booster (which, in Australia, they refer to strictly as a “CV”).
He smiled and beckoned me to go down the elevator with him.
I never went to Chifley Tower again.
“Hey, where are we going?” I asked as we walked through random streets in the CBD.
“Oh, I’m taking you to the office,” said Pete.
“Oh, okay. Uh, how come it’s not in Chifley Tower?”
“Oh yeah, that’s not our office,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s just where the mail goes.”
“The mail?!”
“Yeah. I guess it looks better if the address says, ‘Chifley Tower.’”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
What seemed like an eternity later, we arrived at their office: a white-colored building in the shadows of Pitt Street, right across the Marriott Hotel and a stone’s-throw away from Circular Quay. We walked inside a small entrance, went up the elevator to the second floor, and walked toward the glass doors of the office.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The place was tiny. Good God, the foyer of the 29th floor in Chifley Tower was bigger. The main area was just a small room with a few computers on the side and two mini-offices adjacent to it.
The employees — all four of them — greeted me with a Vietnam-War-version of a Hero’s Welcome: silence, awkward stares, and deep mistrust. Within seconds, I felt alone and despised. Fuck me.
Pete sat me down on the large table in the center of the cramped room while I waited for Andrew to come back to the office and discuss my role.
Within a few more seconds, I realized that everyone in the office was a dick. They were ruthless to each other without smiles, jokes, and enjoyment in anything they did or said. Two were from China and the other two from Italy.
At that point in April 2011, the longest any of the four had lived in Australia was five years.
Andrew finally came in. He was a short, pudgy, and balding piece of work and he wore a suit that was at least one size too big. He gave me a firm handshake as he led me to his “office.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked after I sat down. “Let’s grab some breakfast.”
He took me downstairs to a small café around the corner. He “shouted” (an Aussie term for buying something for someone) a glass of orange juice and it turned out that it was the nicest thing that cunt would ever do for me.
We talked briefly about what was expected of the job: if I worked my ass off and everything worked out, they would sponsor a work visa for me. By the looks of it, however, I had no idea if they were lying.
I never saw Pete again.
That was Monday.
Tuesday wasn’t much better. I walked into the miniature office and came face-to-face with KM Securities’s newest intern (hint: it wasn’t me) who began working that fucking day.
He was a Vietnamese-Australian guy named Nick who lived in Cabramatta, which is Sydney’s version of Compton.
If that wasn’t bad enough, there was another intern that day. She was an American girl who had already interned there for a few months beforehand while studying abroad.
I watched her interact with the others and she was a complete bitch to everyone.
I tried to make conversation with her because, well, I mean we’re countrymen — but she talked to me like I was stealing her time and oxygen.
Now the situation at KM Securities became more bizarre: the company had four full-time employees and four interns (me, Pete, Nick, and the Paris Hilton wannabe).
As for my job duties and responsibilities, I had none; Andrew gave me the most useless fucking tasks, which I always finished before lunch. One time, when the office was emptier, I started chatting to the younger Chinese guy:
“You know, I was expecting something different when I started working here,” I said.
“Hmm?” he asked.
“Well, I mean, if you look at the website, the company looks so big and great—”
“Yeah…”
“—and it’s very different. I mean, they said they had a board of directors and a few offices in different countries.”
“What board of directors?” he said with a chuckle. “There is no board.”
“What?!”
“Don’t be mislead by the website, man,” he said in a dejected tone while staring at his computer screen. “It got me, too.”
Fucking hell.
There was some good news, though.
Number one, that horrific week ended early for an Australian “perfect storm” of holidays: Good Friday, Easter, and ANZAC Day.
Number two, I planned to take a day-trip with Vic to tour around New South Wales.
Number three, the American girl’s last day was on Wednesday.
Number four, during that long weekend, the company planned to move to a new (and nicer) office and I was hoping for some encouraging signs.
I walked to Hunter Station that Thursday night, loosening my tie and sighing away my stress and anxiety from the last four days. Fuck.
I flew several thousand miles to take a chance and it began to crumble before my very eyes. I said I wanted to live in Australia and I fucking meant it — I said I was going to work my ass off and I meant that too. But I was also scared.
Aside from KM Securities, I had no other options. “If I just got an opportunity,” I always said to myself, “I will move heaven and earth to prove how great I can be at this.”
Later that night, I checked my email and found one from Andrew. The email stopped me in cold blood.
He let me go.
Part III: Sometimes You Have to Eat Shit
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
His explanation reeked of bullshit: because of the small size of the new office they rented, they had no physical space for me in the office. Effective May 5th, I could no longer work for KM Securities.
What the fuck?!
I haven’t even worked an entire business week yet and they already wanted to eliminate me. I didn’t know how to feel — it was such a colossal moment. My flight to Australia, my leaving Taiwan, my staying with Victor… everything became wasted. To make things worse, Andrew left town that week.
The following Tuesday, May 3rd, I went back to KM Securities and talked with the coworker who was disappointed about the website.
“Have you started looking for other jobs?” he asked.
“No. I was really dedicated on working here,” I said.
“But they said there’s no room for you, right?”
“Yeah…?”
“…I’d look for work.”
After my next and final day, I walked home in a daze, scared about the future.
“What the fuck should I do?” I wondered. “Should I go back home to America? Should I stay and — who knows — have this happen again? What now?”
Don’t forget that I told all my friends and family that I was moving to Australia to chase my dream and succeed. The boldness of it all — everyone was cheering for me: all the friends I left in Taiwan, all the friends I left in South Korea, and my closest friends back at home.
I occasionally peeked at the large card everyone signed at my farewell party in Taiwan and saw how they covered it with encouragement.
One of my best friends wrote: “…despite selfish reasons that want you to stay, I am very happy for you and this great opportunity. No matter what, I know you’ll make the best of it. Enjoy down under, ya fuckin wanker!”
How could I tell them what happened? What would my parents say? My dad actually believed in me and thought I could nail the internship. I’m not a super guilty person, but I couldn’t bear to face them and explain that my dream became a nightmare.
The next week, I started the next chapter in my Australian saga: Google-searching every single financial company in the Sydney metropolitan area. I scoured their websites for an email address or phone number, and I sent them my cover letter and resume.
But because I was already in Australia because of the KM Securities disaster, I had to deal with new, harder obstacles:
I didn’t have experience, I couldn’t legally work in Australia because I came with a basic landing visa, and worst-of-all, companies just weren’t hiring.
America’s “Great Recession” fucked up the rest of the world and left global financial markets in disrepair. European countries were tanking. The Euro was collapsing. And even in a country with a strong national budget surplus, Australia struggled too. Nothing was working.
Inside, I felt disgusting. This entire time, Victor’s family was putting me up in their lovely townhome, cooking me dinner, and doing the best they could to make things convenient for me.
And I didn’t even have a fucking job! I felt so guilty and awful. Why were they so nice to me? What could I say?
I didn’t deserve it. I owed them everything and I had nothing.
Inside, my mind turned into a World War I battlefield with dead bodies strewn everywhere and nerve gas shells exploding in the distance. I struggled with discouragement, frustration, and, worst of all, resentment.
There were so many times I wished I never left Taiwan and wanted to give up. When I didn’t feel like that, I was usually pissed with the job market, Australia in general, that cunt Andrew Jefferies, and whatever scapegoats I could get my hands on.
Over the next few weeks, life became a blur — I lost track of the day, the date, the time, and where my days went. The money that I brought with me from Taiwan to Australia was vanishing and my daily schedule looked like this:
Wake Up.
Turn on computer.
Search for jobs.
Email companies.
Send resumes.
Make calls.
Email companies again.
Send resumes again.
Aside from that, I did whatever I could to feel productive. Three days a week, I went to the gym, which was a good excuse to actually put clothes on and leave the house.
There was a small boxing gym about a 40-minute walk away with a dusty power rack and some dumbbells by the corner. That was my church. That was my religion.
Fitness was the only thing that took away the sting of being hopelessly unemployed.
Aside from that, I could only really look forward to futsal on Wednesdays, hanging out with Vic and friends on the weekends, and playing basketball on Sunday. In the blink of an eye, however, it was late-May and I still had no job.
Finally, my luck changed.
Part IV: $1 Sushi Rolls
One morning, a company called Inertia Securities returned my email and asked if I could stop by their office later that day. Was this the break I’ve been looking for the past five weeks? Lord knew I needed it.
“Sure!” I replied and I threw on my suit and sped to their office to give my all, preparing for the absolute worst. I can’t get my hopes us, I thought. What if it’s a sham just like KM Securities?
Two hours later, I found their office on O’Connell Street just north of Hunter Street in an older building in the shadows of the CBD. I took the elevator up to the foyer and, when I stepped through their double-doors, I saw a complete 180-degree change from my previous employer.
This office flowed with life and energy!
Employees paced about while talking on their headsets, computer screens flickered with quotes and trades, and high-definition televisions blasted financial news — it resembled an actual trading-floor.
Already, this was 100-times better than KM Securities.
The Managing Director, Tom Rodell, greeted me and led me through the office to an empty room in the back. We sat down on opposite sides of the desk as he gave me a light version of a job interview, asking me questions about my background, my studies, and my goals and complimenting my bravery for moving to Australia.
“Do you have a work visa?” he asked.
“Unfortunately not,” I said.
I thought that about killed my chances, but he surprisingly decided to take a small chance on me. “We’ll start you as an intern,” said Tom (unpaid, of course), “and if you do well, we’ll sponsor you for a Subclass 457 Visa.” How could I say no? With Inertia, at least, I had a chance of getting something.
“Have you sponsored a Subclass 457 Visa before?” I asked. They did several times. Yes! The very next day, I came back to the Inertia Securities office at 8:30am and started my new job.
They set me up on an empty cubicle near the corner of the room, created my network privileges, and started me on my first and only mission for the day: cold-calling.
Tom wanted me to call a long list of “targeted” leads and educated me with what I needed to say and what I should do if they were interested.
After his quick lesson, it took me fifteen minutes just to get the courage to dial the first number, which thankfully went straight to voicemail. After dialing about twenty numbers, I realized that the list was horribly outdated.
Most of the email addresses and numbers were extinct and, once, the person I asked for died two years ago.
Beyond the deleted numbers and the deceased, I called people in the middle of nowhere, which was an adventure because I couldn’t understand anyone. Someone would answer the phone sounding like Crocodile Dundee on muscle relaxers and I had to constantly have them repeat themselves.
One older guy spelled his email aloud, but every letter sounded the same. Then he said a word that sounded like, “fulstah.” Fulstah? What the fuck did that mean? I walked over to a broker, Jeff Hunter, and asked him:
“Uh, he was saying, ‘full stop,’” said Jeff.
“Ohh! Okay.” I paused. “What does ‘full stop’ mean?”
He looked at me like I asked him where the Earth was. He grabbed a piece of scratch paper and put a dot on the page with his pen.
“That’s a full stop,” he said.
“Oh—”
“—What do you guys call it?”
“A period.”
After a week at Inertia, my job remained just as glamorous. Besides calling people in every state and rural city in the country, they tasked me with building spreadsheets, writing and organizing their daily newsletter, going to a nearby stationary store called WC Penfold to buy supplies, and performing any other random tasks they could think of.
That first week, I was so bored that I would go to the restroom to take extra-long shits.
My food situation wasn’t much better — I was so broke that I would buy $1 sushi rolls from the underground mall by Wynyard Station and eat three of them on the train ride home.
On the crowded evening CityRail after work, people in suits stared at me as I sat there with a salmon roll in one hand and a packet of soy sauce in the other. If I was feeling extravagant, I would spend three Australian dollars to buy whatever leftovers they sold at the end of the day from a nearby Vietnamese fast-food restaurant.
(It didn’t taste half bad, honestly.)
Yet even though I was broke and didn’t have a real paying job, I finally got into a routine. I’d work Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5:30pm and have some semblance of a social life.
In the meantime, I also thought — erroneously — that my accent was going to get me Australian girls. In America, girls love Australian accents.
I remember hanging out with my Aussie friends back in college and constantly listening to girls ask them to say random words just to hear them talk with their Aussie accents. I thought it was going to be the exact same thing in Australia.
Boy, was I wrong.
What I didn’t realize is that, overseas, English-speaking countries were bombarded with American accents from movies, TV shows, music, and news. To Aussies, the American twang was rather commonplace and, despite the fact I couldn’t always understand what they said, they could always understand what I said.
Ultimately, I went on one measly date during my entire fucking time in Australia and it was maddening.
She was cute, but in hindsight, I think she (or I) was just bored. We met on a bus one night as I was heading home from Glebe, we had a good conversation, and I thought, “What the hell… why not ask?”
I really, really wish I didn’t. We went to the Light Festival at Circular Quay a few nights later — which was actually really awesome — but I knew there was no date number two.
Eventually, things picked up at work because my superiors liked my eagerness to learn. They rewarded me by moving my seat to a trading desk with Frank Watford and Jeff Hunter.
Frank was a Kiwi (a New Zealander) who moved to Sydney a few years ago and, although a bit of a dickhead, was a pretty savvy trader — when I joined them, he already had over twelve consecutive winning trades.
Jeff, the broker, was just a few years older than me and always came to work wearing jeans and Pumas. We spent most of the day listening to music, doing some financial bullcrap here and there, and destroying all kinds of odd, cultural stereotypes.
“Hey Yeung,” Jeff said one day, out of the blue, “why do Americans always put peanut butter in their fucking candies?”
“Uhh, because it’s delicious?”
“Yeah, but with all your candies?”
“Not all of them. Why? What do you put in your candy?”
“Nothing, man, it’s just candy.”
“Ahh. But do you eat American candy?”
“Sometimes. There’s an international candy shop around the corner from here,” he said. “What’s the deal with Junior Mints?”
“What deal?”
“I mean, are they good?”
“They’re alright. Why?”
“They were in Seinfeld.”
“Haha, that’s how you found out about them?!”
“Yeah man! Those and Juggie Fruits.”
Working with him was much better than where I was. Previously, I sat a few feet away from an Englishman named Joesph Albion who took his job far too seriously.
He always came to work with a pinstripe suit, cufflinks, a pocket square, and a pompous tie done Full Windsor of course.
“Every minute I’m helping you is another minute I’m not making money,” he said on my third day at Inertia.
“Oh. Sorry, then.”
“No. That means I want to spend my time teaching you. But I have to know: are you wasting my time or are you going to listen to what I say?”
“I’m ready, man.”
“Alright then.”
One drawback of sitting with Jeff, however, was that he had me do his government exams for him. “It’s the Australian way,” he said. Meanwhile, Tom and another guy named Andrew Stevens were the brains of the operation with some Zimbabwe guy being their right-hand man.
Doug was an Asian guy who actually worked in America previously and did the night shift so he could trade foreign currencies (known in the biz as “Forex”). He talked quietly while stammering a lot, but he took a shine to me and taught me about trading.
“All you need,” he said in a gentle tone, “is two pips. If you can make two pips with every trade, you’ll make a lot of money.”
“Two pips. Gotcha.”
[Here’s a crash course on finance that you can skip unless you’re a super nerd: a pip is one-thousandth of whatever currency you’re referring to — thus, two pips for a Euro would be the difference between €1.231 and €1.233.
It seemed easy enough, but Doug referred to a two-pip profit. When you buy a currency, you’re already at a loss because of something called “the spread:” the price you buy it at (“the bid”) is below the price people sell it at (“the ask”).
For the more-robust currencies — like the US Dollar, the Euro, the Pound, and the Yen — the spread is small and usually within two pips. (For less-traded currencies, the spread is larger.)
Thus, when you buy, for example, the Yen, you’re already at a two-pip loss; now you have to make that up and then make a two-pip profit.
Couple that with the fact that Forex market is the most-volatile, highest-traded market on Earth (over four trillion dollars per day), and you’d see why success was damn near impossible.]
I tried it and, two weeks later, I talked to Doug.
“Doug,” I said with frustration, “two-pips is hard!”
He laughed like a father laughing at a child who realized that the Moon wasn’t made out of cheese.
“Yes, two-pips is hard,” he said gently. “Most traders can’t do it.”
“So what happens to them if they can’t?”
“They get fired.”
Ouch.
Part V: The Turnaround
A few weeks later, with less than a month remaining on my visa (it was mid-June), I asked Tom about the possibility of getting a sponsorship and he gave me ambiguous answers. Eventually, he told me that the company would give me their final answer on a Monday.
“So what are you going to do this weekend?” Vic asked me later.
“Well… I need to get to the point – mentally – where I’m okay with either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I mean, don’t get me wrong: it would be awesome if they said ‘yes.’ But it wouldn’t make me happy… I would be excited… and thrilled. But it wouldn’t make me happy… because I’m already happy.”
“Sounds good.”
(How Zen can you get?)
On Monday, I arrived at the office and waited all fucking day. I sat on the computer, opening and closing the same browser again and again and reading the same articles just to kill time. Nothing happened.
What the fuck was the hold up? Did you guys remember we were supposed to talk? I found Tom before the day ended and politely asked him if he came to a decision yet.
Judging by his idiotic stammering reaction, he hadn’t even thought of it yet. I felt like shit because I mentally prepared for a showdown with my boss and he just left me hanging.
He offered me a small consolation: “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I’ll have chat with Jeff later on about the decision and I’ll give you an answer by Wednesday. I’ll email you because I’ll be flying to Singapore tomorrow to meet with those Forex academies.”
Great. More waiting. But what other choice did I have than to sit there and take it from behind?
Wednesday came. I commuted to the CBD like every other morning this month, walked into the office, and sat down in my usual seat next to Jeff. “This was it,” I thought. “Now or never.” I slowly turned my head to the right and asked him how the chat went.
“So,” I asked, “are they going to sponsor me?”
He sighed. Oh God, no.
“Well,” he replied, “it’s really unlikely, mate.”
I froze. Oh God, no.
“It’s just too much money to ask for,” said Jeff. “Look around you, champ. Look at all the empty desks and offices; this place used to be packed with brokers. Now look at it—”
I nodded, looking around. On the group of tables I sat at, two entire tables weren’t occupied. In the offices along the wall, only one had someone there — a consultant from New York.
“A few years ago, sure,” he said. “But now, you can see the writing on the wall. Even I’m ready to leave.”
I nodded again.
“I don’t want you to be taken for a ride, mate,” he added. “Look, when does your visa expire?”
“July 12th?”
“You should just enjoy the rest of your time here.”
“Okay.” I paused and tried to gather my thoughts. “Would you mind being a reference for me?”
“Of course. Just email me.”
I packed my things — which wasn’t that much, to be honest — and left before noon that day, trying not to cry.
I walked out of those wooden double-doors, undid my tie, and took the elevator down to the streets below. Outside, the city seemed like it always did; the only difference was, now, I wouldn’t be a part of it.
I stumbled over to Circular Quay and sat on a concrete bench that overlooked the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. “I’m not going back,” I said. What the hell do I do now? I pulled out a pen and, on a legal pad I grabbed from work, I wrote below a scribbled title,
“WHAT DO I WANT TO DO??:
Keep Traveling —> how?
Problems:
- I’m running out of money
- I’m tired of failing
Solutions:
- Find a job (where?)
- Start a business
- Go back to Korea?
- Go back to Taiwan
I felt crushed. Again. Goddammit, Australia. In just three months, I ate shit and lost every single thing I had. I was broke, I exhausted almost all my savings from my year teaching in Korea, I was jobless (again), I was lied to, and I was fed up.
“I’m sorry, dude,” Victor said when he came back home that night. We leaned on the marble counter in the kitchen and I told him everything.
“Well,” I said, “I guess I have to start looking for flights back home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Man… I can’t keep staying here and failing.” When I said “here,” I think we both knew it was more about staying at his house and freeloading off his family than actually living in Sydney.
The next day, with nothing better to do, I took a bus down Burwood Road to the Westfield shopping center by the train station for lunch. I walked around the loud, echo-filled food court, lost in my thoughts when, suddenly, my phone rang. I looked at my phone and saw it was an unrecognized number.
“Hello?” I asked cautiously.
“Hey man,” someone answered, “why aren’t you at work?”
“Uh, who is this?”
“This is Tom.”
Tom? My boss? Why the hell was he calling me? He knew damn well why I wasn’t at work.
“Because,” I said. “I talked to Jeff yesterday and he said you guys wouldn’t sponsor the visa.”
“Look man. Never mind that. We want you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Come back to work. Monday, I’ll be back in the office and we can start up and train you to become a broker. Then, all you need is your RG146 and then you can be a broker.”
No, I thought. Stop fucking taking advantage of me — for the first time since I arrived in Sydney, I had power:
“No,” I interrupted. “I won’t come back until I get a clear answer from you: are you guys going to sponsor me?”
“It’s pretty much a ‘yes,’ man,” he said without hesitation. “I mean, I wouldn’t have people waste time to train you if we didn’t want you,” he said in a pleading tone.
“Look,” he added, “I think you would make a great stockbroker.”
I thought silently for a few seconds, but it seemed like minutes. Should I give him another chance? They were serious this time, right? I mean it made sense: why would they waste time on me if they didn’t want me?
But these were the same guys that fucked with me two days ago. Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. Yet, what other chance did I have?
None.
“Okay,” I finally said.
I came back to work on Friday, and after several smiles and kind words greeted me, Tom and I discussed our agreement: the company would sponsor my Subclass 457 Visa (but I would pay for the processing fees, which legally they should’ve paid) and I would work as a Deals Assistant while studying for an RG146, a financial certification in Australia.
After that, I would transition to stockbroking. No problem. Then, they asked for a background check and copies of my passport, diploma, and letters of recommendations. No problem.
Finally, they put the job description on paper and finalized a contract for me. “I guess now, I gotta start looking for a place to live,” I said with a smile, sitting on Vic’s patio with a few friends that weekend.
Now I had to deal with new problems (good problems!) like finding an apartment, studying for stockbroking courses, and, you know, planning my budget, now that I was going to earn a decent salary and all.
By then, all I wanted to do was live in Sydney: I loved the culture, I loved the city, I loved the lifestyle, and I loved the people.
The weather was so nice even though it was winter. The city had so much to offer on nights and weekends. (They even televised Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games on One HD.) Hell, I loved that they drove on the other side of the road!
On June 30th, Inertia Securities officially submitted (in Australia, they say “lodged”) their applications for my sponsorship and nomination. At last! All my hard work! All my struggles! All the money and time I wasted! All of it was worth it! I couldn’t believe it: my dreams were finally… coming… true.
I got my dream job at a stockbrokerage. I got to wear suits everyday. I got to do cool work and earn a good salary. But best of all, I got to live in Sydney-fucking-Australia with awesome people and one of my best friends on Earth.
For a skinny kid from the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles, it was the chance of a lifetime. Now I could go to Victor and his generous family, smile, thank them profusely, and let them know that every bit of support and encouragement they gave me ultimately led to this achievement.
We could celebrate it together.
That Independence Day (America’s, not Australia’s), I walked into a work, sat at my desk, and logged into the Department of Immigration’s website to confirm a few numbers for my visa application. But something looked strange. Huh? I scrolled up and down the page and couldn’t believe my eyes. What the hell is going on…?
They changed the numbers.
Unbeknownst to me, the Australian government increased the minimum salary for people applying for the Subclass 457 Visa by 2,000 AUD, effective July 1st, 2011.
It was like Indiana Jones shoved a flagpole into the spokes of my motorcycle like in Temple of Doom as everything exploded under my balls and sent me flying.
First, when Inertia Securities lodged my application they chose the minimum salary, which was already way higher than they wanted to pay me (roughly US$56,000/year).
Second, to get a Subclass 457 Visa, whatever job title Inertia Securities gave me had to come from a pre-approved list from the Australia and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations.
They didn’t do that either because a “Deals Assistant” isn’t an approved job.
Thus, when I logged into the Department of Immigration site on July 4th, I realized that we violated both those rules and had to correct the mistakes immediately. I ran over to Leslie, the Human Resources girl, but she told me in a frustrated tone that any salary and job title changes had to be approved by Tom.
Then things went from bad to worse.
Part VI: The Final Saga
On Thursday morning, July 7th, I sat at my desk and checked my email to see a subject that looked like it was written with a broken caps-lock button: “ALL HANDS MEETING AT 10AM.”
Shit.
When 10am rolled around, all the employees gathered around Andrew’s cubicle as he stood there panicking with one hand on his hip, one hand behind his head, and bloodshot-red eyes.
Without even uttering the words, every inch of his body told us, “Guys… we’re in deep shit.”
According to him, that morning, a few competing financial firms created some false allegations about our company, which convinced one of our largest providers to cancel all services and withdraw all accounts.
What did all that mean to our bottom-line? We lost about 30% in one day. Fuck. T
he managers stayed on the phone non-stop that day, begging people to stay and working with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) — Australia’s equivalent of the SEC — to help us clear our name.
By late afternoon, Andrew called another all-hands meeting at the center of the office; with tears in his eyes, he told us that the company was about to collapse. “Andrew,” I said with sympathy after the meeting, “if there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.”
“Thanks man,” he said holding back tears.
Now, of course, I had a vested interest in Inertia Securities getting back on track: if they crumbled, so would I and so would any hope of me living in Australia. If I got rejected, I had to go back to America, end of story.
With such an enormous disaster pounding the company, what would happen for my stupid appeal to change my application and ask for even more money to satisfy the government requirement?
If anything, they’d probably want to get rid of me to save money. By the next morning, it got more and more obvious that there was no future for me.
“Hey man,” Andrew said, peering over the short cubicle wall, “can you do me a favour?”
Finally, my chance to help! Call a client? Research a stock? Check on the markets?
“Sure thing!”
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m starving and, like, I haven’t eaten all day. Can you run down and grab a few sushi rolls for me?”
I blinked.
“Just walk down on Pitt and there’s a sushi place on the left.”
I stood there dumbfounded. He gave me a five-dollar bill, told me what he wanted, and went back to his computer. Are you fucking kidding me? I’m supposed to be a “Deals Assistant” at a stockbrokerage and I’m still making food runs? “Not much has changed,” I thought.
On July 12th, my tourist visa officially ended and I automatically transitioned to a Bridging Visa as I awaited the results of my application. I waited six more nerve-racking days before I finally squeezed myself into the schedule to chat Tom and Leslie.
That morning, I told them that they had to fix our applications to meet the government rules and braced for an impact that would rival a head-on collision with a train. I stood in Leslie’s office behind her desk as Tom sighed heavy and tilted his head.
“Look mate,” Tom said, “we just can’t sponsor you anymore.”
Just like that, everything was over: my life in Australia; living in Victor’s attic; our friends; his family; those weekly basketball games; my career in finance; training in that dusty, shitty gym in Burwood; my two year’s of traveling after college… everything came to a screeching halt.
I looked fine on the surface, but inside I wept.
Tom and Leslie decided to let the current, incorrect application run its course so it could be rejected by the Department of Immigration. It was eleven o’clock. I left the office for the final time at twelve. The only bright spot of that entire ordeal was a quick phone chat with a representative at ANZSCO before I left Inertia Securities for the last time:
“So the application is wrong?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Well… it’s going to get rejected.”
“Sigh. I know.”
“Well… if that’s the case, why don’t you cancel your request?”
“I need to keep my Bridging Visa; my tourist visa expired.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. The Bridging Visa is yours and you’ll still have it. It’s just, if you ever want to come back to Australia and get a visa, it won’t look good on your application if you’ve been rejected before.”
“Oh.”
“I’m just going to go ahead and cancel your application.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
That night, I told Victor, his family, and my parents that it was all over and I bought plane tickets to go back to Los Angeles. I’ve never felt so low in my life. Victor and his family let me stay in their townhome for the last four months for free and they cooked me meals, gave me a ride when I needed it, and even hung my freakin’ laundry.
They were nicer than MY family! And everything I had aspired to do when I first arrived ended in a horrible failure. How on Earth could I repay them back for everything they did? Why were they even that generous? Just because I was Victor’s friend? Shit, what made him so generous in the first place? Fuck me.
That Friday night, I invited Victor and his family to dinner at a Korean restaurant in Strathfield that sold some bomb-ass haejangguk — my favorite Korean dish in the entire year I spent teaching English in Incheon — and I got Vic a nice pressie. It was the absolute least I could do after everything they did for me.
On Tuesday, the day before I flew back to Los Angeles, I walked on the bridge over Cockle Bay through the cool, crisp dusk, staring back at the beautiful lights, shapes, and angles from Sydney. I leaned over the railing to catch a glimpse of my home for the last four months for one final time and turned toward Pyrmont to meet Victor for a dinner party. It was supposed to be a surprise party, but a few people spilled the beans. (I didn’t care, though; I was just happy to see everyone one last time.)
It was a farewell party to end all farewell parties. Damn near every single person I ever met when I was in Australia was at that bar. For some crazy reason, Vic went through all this trouble and I was absolutely indebted to him. “Just one more thing,” he said before the end of the party. “We all got together and we got you this.” He handed me an Australian Rules football signed by everyone at the party.
(That football currently sits in the living room of my condo, by the way.)
The night I left Sydney, Victor arranged to give me a ride to the airport and we had one last meal at the Strathfield mall. We sat mostly in silence during the drive toward the airport on that clear, dark night, and I had no idea what to think. At the airport, he got out of the car and walked around to the curb to say goodbye.
I wanted to cry, but nothing came out. After four harrowing months in Australia, I lost several thousand dollars, wasted months of time and effort, frustrated myself beyond all belief, and — maybe — gave myself an ulcer or two. It hurt. It hurt to say goodbye to the people I loved and the people who supported me. And it hurt the most to know that, even though I took a huge risk in life, I failed miserably.
That is, until you define failure.
Only years later did I realize something they don’t teach you in college:
What is failure?
During my final days in Australia, I wrote a blog post (on a now defunct blog) where I chronicled my adventures and mishaps with KM Securities, Inertia Securities, and ANZSCO. I posted it on Facebook and the response was overwhelmingly sympathetic.
So many people — teacher friends from South Korea, friends from back home, and everyone in between — messaged me and helped ease the pain. Many of them were shocked that such a catastrophe happened. But despite all the hurt, I’ll never forget a simple line my old buddy and neighbor in Incheon, Kevin, wrote to me:
“You only fail when you give up and stop seeing the positive in this world.”
To this day, I carry that quote with me in my heart.
The harsh truth is that you will fail. I promise you: you will fucking fail. At some point in your life, something will explode in your face, leave you reeling and forcing you to dig deep — deeper than you can imagine — to pull yourself out. And it’s only at that point where the real successful people shine.
“Adversity,” a Chinese proverb goes, “is the mirror of one’s soul.”
Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, wrote that the secret to success was: “Falling down six times and getting up seven.”
On a closer look, even though I failed to achieve my dream of living in Australia, I still advanced bravely and thoroughly into my life. And the sad truth is that most people never take that risk; instead, they cling onto the only world they know and can handle.
The debacle in Sydney alone may have been worth the struggle just to know that I did it and, if the event arose in the future, that I could do it again. In my blog post, I wrote this paragraph because I truly believed it:
The more I live, the more I realize it’s utterly undeniable that our dreams matter. It’s our relentless and unapologetic ability to dream that motivates and fuels our spirit. Catastrophes can destroy almost everything — your job, your house, your children, your loved ones — but you’ll always have your dreams and your ability to dream.
I never told anyone this, but one night during my first week in Sydney, I stood on the balcony of Vic’s pad to look at the night sky and gaze at the planets. Suddenly, a shooting star flashed across the sky. “Make a wish,” I thought. I smiled and said, “I wish for sponsorship.” Ultimately, I got what I wished for, but the spirit was lost.
That’s when I learned another powerful lesson:
Be careful what you wish for.
Sometimes life gives you want… and then you suddenly realize you never wanted it in the first place. Sometimes what you want becomes a curse that holds you back and garbles your journey. Sometimes it becomes the chain that binds you.
If I got my wish in late-2008, I would be in Manhattan working in JP Morgan, making over $100,000/year.
Instead, I couldn’t find a job and fled the States.
But looking back, I wouldn’t have traded it for the world: if it wasn’t for this journey, I would’ve never joined the fitness industry, wrote for Men’s Health, moved to Denver, and had the career, the friends, and the lifestlye I have now.
The experience and courage I gained was worth it all. In a quote that’s sometimes attributed to the Dalai Lama, someone says, “Sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
I’ll never forget that.
[…] April 2011, I moved to Sydney, Australia, to start an unpaid internship at an investment bank. But that company lied to me, misrepresented themselves, and ruined me within my first week in the […]