Following your bliss

A head spinning trip around the work ... Time Is Nothing // Around The World Time Lapse by Kien Lam via Kuriositas

 

Time Is Nothing // Around The World Time Lapse from Kien Lam on Vimeo.

From his ABOUT ME PAGE 

Refugee All-Star 

I was born in a refugee camp on the island of Lantau in Hong Kong. My parents were part of a group of Vietnamese migrants who left a country forever changed by a war they wanted no part of. Under the cover of darkness, they quietly hid on a fishing trawler that would make a perilous journey over a thousand miles in hopes of finding safety and refuge somewhere. Their unlikely voyage brought them from Vietnam to Hong Kong to the Philippines before eventually settling them in 1980’s California. Here, my mom would stay home to take care of me and my sister, while my dad worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week below minimum wage to support us. This was the beginning of our American Dream.  

Chasing The American Dream 

I don’t really know if my dad really had a choice in deciding that he’d be working as a butcher in a supermarket until he retired. He never complained at the time and he never used it to guilt me or my siblings into studying or working harder. He just did what he had to do for his family and that was that. 

My mom had the grander ambitions for us. Despite her own limited schooling during the war, I remember sitting with my mom at the dinner table every night while she drilled me in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division before I even started kindergarten. With hardly any English, she somehow found me a octogenarian piano teacher who would give me lessons for $5. When she heard about a typewriting class at a local community college, she found a way to enroll me even though I was only 7 years old at the time. She even found a way to get me into a program for the gifted and then woke up every morning at 6 am to drop me off at the bus station where I’d take a bus for an hour to go to a better school. 

Find Your Course and Run Towards It

I was your stereotypical hardworking Asian kid growing up. Straight A’s, played the piano, really good at math. I even played ping pong and had the bowl cut. Right on schedule, I graduated from high school, attended a prestigious Ivy League business school and secured a job with the largest asset manager in the world.  

The Good Life 

The new job came with sharp suits, fine dining and disposable income. For the first time, I could buy my family nice gifts and take them on a proper holiday. For myself, I turned off my Blackberry and spent 3 weeks running around as a backpacker every year, choosing the budget lifestyle over the lavish one. It was a nice balance, but one that ultimately had to tip one way or the other. 

I became envious of backpackers who were traveling around the world for stretches of months and years at a time, rather than days or weeks. There were so many places to explore and adventures to be had. I was earning good money, but I couldn’t use it to buy more time.  

Golden Handcuffs 

I enjoyed my job and the security it brought, but something was missing. I dreamed of sleeping under the stars in the Sahara desert more than being promoted to Managing Director. I had a wider smile at the thought of embarking on a series of unexpected misadventures with someone I just met than of buying a new car with my annual bonus. 

Each time I went to Los Angeles to visit my family, I just wished I could stay for longer. Full stop.  

Don’t Be Afraid To Give Up The Good, For The Great 

In late 2010, these conflicting thoughts all came to a head and in a surprising moment of absolute clarity, I made a big decision: I quit my job. 

I bought a one way ticket to London and started chasing the warm weather around the world (we were having a particularly cold year in San Francisco). To me, the economics of staying in my job just didn’t make sense. There was just so much to do. 

Indeed, after taxes and paying for the cost of living in San Francisco, I was saving a lot less than I thought and I was giving up so much more. Over the next year, I bootstrapped it across 5 continents and 17 countries. I ate sheep brains in Morocco, dived with sharks in Indonesia and sped down the Death Road in Bolivia. With my longer visits to Los Angeles, I did Zumba workout classes with my mom and gambled with my dad and a bunch of old guys in a Chinese take-out restaurant. I didn’t want it to stop. This life made more sense. What was I working so hard for if I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.