Previously on…LIFE

I’ve finally gotten around to reporting on the NOW. Hmm…actually not yet. I’m going to catch people up on how my NOW came about. This is a story I want to share because I believe everyone is destined to follow a path to serve a role and create and find meaning in one’s existence in this world.

Not many can do this, but I can pinpoint the exact date when everything changed. August 25^th, 2008. That was the foretold date of my coming of ‘good fortune’. (I was approached by an Indian fortune-teller 3 months previously who told me what I was thinking and stated 25/8…and then asked for $10).

On that fateful day, I received a text message from the new guy at work. ‘Let’s run away. We’ll get into your car and get lost in the sticks. It’ll be an adventure! =)’. That text represented a cross-road: yes or no.

Yes: runaway with a complete stranger from my cookie-cutter, spoon-fed life and open myself to a world of infinite possibilities.

No: stick to what I know and take the 5-lane freeway towards the white-picket fence all us middle-class, Asian, Catholic school-girls are conditioned for. (FYI, I’m spiritual, not religious)

mmm...YES.

I roamed Victoria, pitched my first tent, fell in love, climbed a mountain, flew to Queensland, got a job on a remote island on the Great Barrier Reef, fell out of love, connected with the nature, found the Universe, had an epiphany, sent an email, flew to Cambodia, ran a preschool in the slums of Siem Reap for displaced Vietnamese children, got kicked out of the country for ‘terrorism’, wallowed in ambivalence back in Melbourne, flew to India, landed again in Cambodia.

My first tent

My sunset life on the Island

The Island

My preschool kids

Henna tattoo in the mountains of Himachal

Cambodia round 2 with my new gang outside Angkor Wat (Unfortunately I can't post pictures of my current work due to its sensitive nature)

And now I’m Country Director of NGO Senhoa, providing vocational training and life-skills education for survivors of human-trafficking. All in a course of 2 years. I haven’t looked back once.