Family Ties

Came home from Amanda’s prize giving ceremony last night and had dinner with her parents and her brother. Man, the stories they told made me laugh till I cried last night. Being at the ceremony last night made me miss the times I had my prize giving ceremonies in Malaysia. Which then reminded me of my family back home.

See, Amanda won the most prestigious award of the night, the Ken Hall medal for the best overall graduating honours student in Curtin Business school. Then her dad went to go talk to Emeritus Professor Ken Hall after the ceremony, which reminded me of the time that dad went up to the press and got me in the newspaper after PMR.

She told me of the story where the defining moment in her life was where once her dad chucked her bag into this big rubbish bin. There was one day she didn’t do her homework and her parents found out and then her dad chucked her bag in this big rubbish bin far away. So Amanda had to go get her bag from her bin in the dark, groping around a smelly bin for her bag and trudged home. When she got home, her dad said, “Don’t want to study, that is what you are going to do. Pick up rubbish for a living”. That pretty much drove the point home.

I guess upon hearing that, it really does make sense: if you don’t put in the effort, you’ll end up like that, without much of a career. That really got me thinking, if I put in the effort now and do well for my pracs, there is going to be employment opportunities along the track. The next 21 weeks at prac will be gruelling but I think I’ve prepared myself mentally for it. I expect a lot of blood (not mine), sweat and tears along the way but I keep telling myself it will all be worth it in the end to see a degree and a resource package for Royal Perth Hospital which can add to my CV.

You only get one chance to live life, and life is too short to let go of these opportunities. From now on, I’m grabbing every opportunity in life I can get my hands on and living the way God wants me to live.