Navigating with Demi

Even though I didn’t get to be a US President and solve world peace, I did manage to live through some of my earlier dreams. Moving to Hong Kong for university was a defining dream came true and my very first pandora’s box open that unfolded some of the wildest ones later.

Spending one’s most formative years in a mid-tier local university in Hong Kong was uniquely exhilarating. Because Hong Kong not just never sleeps, it also remains one of the most interesting and complex and multi-faceted cities I’ve ever seen.

It opened the 18-year-old me up to people of different colours and languages and cultural nuances, to the world’s most dense and busy streets, to the greed for wealth and status, to the shocking observation that raw fish and vegetables are consumable, to the 20x more hefty price tags vs my hometown’s, to different religions, to alcohol and to many many Wan Chai parties etc.

It also enabled me to travel with my very first passport, to appreciate the hustle to make enough to support myself and be financially independent, to make horrific mistakes publicly and to live with the profound shame ever after, and to learn how to pull myself back up before falling down again and again. I loved it.

To me, I was a focused student, who focused on taking in all that diversity Hong Kong has to offer. To my friends and professors, I was a selfish hustler, who single-mindedly pursued my own agenda – getting into an investment bank and making top dollars and high status. And I was successful at both.

My first job in Hong Kong’s then-high-flying investment banking industry helped to unlearn all my poor-student drinking and consumption habits and learn how to walk in heels professionally. There was a lot of sleepless nights, late-night Lan Kwai Fong parties, silent tears in the office corner for getting my cashflows modelling wrong the 2nd time in a row, and early morning workout routine by running between printers and client offices carrying heavy objects – i.e. my hard work the night prior, the pitch books.

Outside of banking, I started to appreciate building more and more meaningful connections with real adults other than my parents and grandparents. Growing up being the absolute centre of the universe as a single child was fun, though it didn’t lose on me the impact of my subsequent self-centredness has on my ability to forge relationships. It’s been a challenging journey to learn how to be a caring friend and a servant leader.

So much that Hong Kong had taught me, though leaving it and investment banking became inevitable at some point in my mid-20s. We will unpack that later. Though looking back, maybe it was because grass was always perceived greener on the other side – so much so that I thought it’d be a brilliant idea to move from a city that never slept, to world’s most quiet city, Zurich, for a change.

To be fair, my experience of Zurich was uniquely shaped by the end of my very first soul-aching love that I left in Hong Kong. And probably the fact that I sucked (and continue to suck) at winter sports, which I can honestly only point to God and the universe for blessing me with a very Southern-Chinese childhood in a very middle-class family where nobody were aware that you could do sports in the snow. My attempt to learn skiing was a beautiful one – surrounded by deep snow in the Swiss Alps with Christmas songs ringing in and the rich smell of fondue in the air. My fellow students at the beginner’s class could hardly walk. In fact, I was pretty sure they all skiied better than walking then. These 2-to-3-year-olds would burst out laughing whenever gravity kicked my butt on the slope, while effortlessly flew past me. I would think to myself, let’s see who can walk up these slopes faster, shall we?

In all fairness, Zurich was a beautiful city, for about maximum 2 months in the summer. It taught me what it feels like to be a minority for the very first time, taught me how to process loneliness and to appreciate that deep romantic connections are so circumstantial and hard to come by and taught me how to travel alone in Europe economically to offset the 10-dollar sandwiches the Swiss dare to charge.

It felt like opening the second pandora’s box – experiencing different cultures, living in as many cities as I possibly can, and in-between exploring and creating who I was. It led me to New York, 2 cities in Northern China, Taipei and most of the capital cities in Southeast Asia later.

As I close this chapter with my favourite local green tea here in Jakarta, I am amazed at how these small steps collectively put me where I am – and I couldn’t help but wonder – how lucky I am, to be right here right now.