At 18 I Wanted to Save the World Now I’m an Engineer So I Guess I Do OK (I think).
When I was a 10-year-old kid in a Malaysian village I liked gardening and fishing. I liked putting seeds in the ground, water them, watch them grow and become plants. And if I was not planting stuffs I’d be digging for earthworms for fishing bait to catch snakehead fish. So I thought maybe I’ll just be a farmer or fisherman when I become one of the adults who know everything and tell us kids what not to do.
Around that time my eldest brother who was living elsewhere left behind his Macintosh Classic computer. So if I was not out and about with mischief around the village I’d sit in front of the computer writing BASIC programs until the computer broke. I don’t think my primitive BASIC programs that broke the computer though not messing around with system files could have probably extended the computer’s life a bit more.
At 15 I saw Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup on TV so I decided I’ll be a soccer player. I was obsessed with soccer and played soccer everyday and figured I should I move to France to further my soccer career. I started playing quite late so I calculated how many hours I needed to train to make up for the lost years, maybe if I just keep on playing I will become good enough to play in France. I never did get better, even now.
At 18 everybody was figuring out what they wanted to do in life. It was clear that my soccer career was going nowhere and whatever I chose to do I would be doing it for the rest of my life, so might as well do something that I love.
There was so much suffering in the World so I wanted to participate in saving it but I knew I was not fit to be a doctor because I have lower-than-average EQ and I was bad at reading social situations in general. I decided I had to become a scientist at the World stage because that’s where I can make any meaningful impact. Life is too short anyway and what is the point of playing small. If I were to go down this path I’d be studying diseases and designing drugs, just be doing biology, chemistry, science and more science that I already love, and, I get to save people.
This was my calling.
But society says that was a wrong choice. My low EQ brain couldn’t figure out for me that in Asia the acceptable careers are doctors, engineers, accountants and lawyers. Religious teachers are also OK. I’m wasting my talent and if they ever get my brains they’ll do something useful. But what about doing something meaningful to contribute to the humanity. You can do that by being a doctor they say. This was Malaysia year 2001 and with science I won’t make a living they say. Again, this. is. a. wrong. choice.
What about your dreams?
Who cares about your dreams, homie. You’re not supposed to follow your dreams. You’re supposed to follow the flow.
I told them if I work hard enough and become one of the best in the World I’m sure I can practice Science somewhere outside Malaysia. That’s ridiculous. I believed that when you want something you should work really hard for it and go all in. Life is so short and what was the point of going basic (the arrogance of youth cannot be understated).
I wanted to tell them that if all the capable people become doctors and lawyers but no scientists we’ll have no invention of our own and it is invention that makes (most) countries more advanced but I was not sure if they’re up to such deep discussion.
So I imagined myself when I were an old man and asked myself would I regret more not pursuing my dreams, or would I regret more not following the flow.
I would regret more not pursuing my dreams.
At 20 somehow the Malaysian government trusted me with taxpayer’s money to move to the US to study Cell Biology at Purdue University. I could read English alright but when I first landed I could barely speak the language. That was the first time I ever went overseas. Indeed there is such a great World out there and after the initial culture shock I fell in love the openness of American culture. At the campus there were scientists doing cool projects on all sorts of interesting stuffs and you can call them by their first name. I was so happy with this environment so I also worked in 2 research labs on top of my classes because I had to be a scientist as soon as possible. I saw interesting classes other than required for my original major so I became greedy and took more and more classes and ended up with Biochemistry and Molecular Biology majors as well, so in total that’s technically 3 majors although they’re closely related, and plus 2 minors in Chemistry and French.
I was made for this. I was intellectually at home.
In my senior year I took a virology (study about viruses) class and they say Purdue University is the World’s best place to study structure of viruses so why don’t I stay. I got myself into the PhD program in the same department and wanted to join a lab that does computational work on solving virus structures. Soon I will be working on important viruses that cause suffering and hence contribute to humanity.
I graduated one semester early so that I could start my PhD as soon as possible because well what am I waiting for.
After graduation I went back to my home country for vacation before continuing pursuit of my dreams.
At 24 I couldn’t go back to the US because of visa problem.
Dream. C r u s h e d……….
At 25–26 I didn’t know what else to do so I worked as a research scientist in my home country. I was lost and unmotivated and did only the minimum to not get fired. I missed the culture and the scale of Science in the US. I wonder if I should throw in my scientific towel and wipe all the fragments of my dreams on the rugged floor of reality and if I should do an MBA in maybe hospital management and find a proper job like a basic Asian.
I wonder if I do the basic people thing, get job that I half hate, get a mortgage because house prices always go up, get married with someone I could tolerate because marriage will make you happy and Islamic, have a kid, have more kids, pay off mortgage, pay insurance diligently every month, get a heart attack, then get another heart attack, retire, look back at what could have been, and finally die, would be something that I could do.
When I got buried in the ground, and people left my grave from my funeral to go back to their lives, there was I, in the ground, along with my dreams. I would probably lived a life unfulfilled, and humankind would be missing what I could have contributed to the society.
Unfortunately I was given a dream. Doing the basic people thing is not something I could do, just yet. Maybe there was still time. Till now I wondered what possessed me at that time, while friends on Facebook were getting married, buying cars and houses and having kids, free of the burden of having to chase a dream.
Not pursuing my dream was not a luxury that I had. I had to do me.
So I looked at PhD programs in Europe because I needed to get the best training possible. There was not much point of being a mediocre scientist.
And looks like these European PhD programs all required a Masters degree.
So at 27–28 I did my Masters while being a research scientist even though I was sometimes still lost and unmotivated. My skills in the laboratory was mediocre I wasted reagents more than average but I did finish the Masters degree. My boss says why don’t you do bioinformatics, a study of analyzing biological data using computational methods. It’s an expanding field and not many people with biology background can or want to code. Plus I did know how to code way back when with the Macintosh Classic when I was not digging earthworms for snakehead fish at 10.
So I applied to PhD programs to do computational work across Europe.
I got rejected by ALL programs except the one in Vienna, Austria where I was in a waiting list.
All the hard work for years and not even a foot in the door.
I wonder if this was the end of my dream, and maybe I shouldn’t have tried to pursue my dream in the first place. Society was right. It’s been ten years since I my Science dream to save the World appeared in my head, this kid from a Malaysian village who wanted to do Science at the World class level and didn’t have any idea where he actually belongs. And now all he had to show for was doors closed on his face in different forms and still going everywhere on a motorbike and not buying a house.
Just to tie loose ends without much hope I contacted Vienna if there’s anything. But wow. Wasn’t luck on my side. The first choice candidate in the Vienna program didn’t take the spot, she’s going to Lausanne, so since you’re in the waiting list now the spot is yours. If you’re up for it and let us know in one week.
Yes I’m taking it.
If this was not a form of God’s grace, I don’t know what is.
At 29 I moved to Vienna, a heaven on Earth. I landed with a suitcase, a big backpack and money that I saved converted to Euros to tide me over until the stipend kicked in. I had no plan B, was pushing my thirties and I could not afford to fail this. Had I had no problems with entering the US 6 years ago, I should have had my PhD by now.
But the past is the past. Now there is only Vienna so I worked day and night which means 8am till 10pm on weekdays and half of that on weekends.
At 31 I published as a first co-author in Nature.
It was less than 2 years after I started my PhD. To have your name on a journal like Nature is one thing but to have your name as the first author in Nature was beyond my wildest dreams.
Once I went to a conference and one guy from maybe UK said you must be the guy that got the Nature paper out, so wow, I suppose this is how it feels like to be famous haha.
I wonder if this was just fluke so I stayed around to see if I could repeat this even though technically my PhD objective was already achieved. Plus there was no rush when you’re living a city like Vienna and I myself hadn’t tortured the Austrians enough with my broken German.
At 33 I published again this time as a first co-author in Nature Biotechnology. Well, not Nature Nature like before but still a kick ass journal.
OK I suppose I can do okay in science at international level.
So lifelong mission accomplished. I never imagined that the wildest dream could come true.
At that point I realized I didn’t want to stay in research. Yes but why don’t you do a postdoc at big labs and then become a group leader and publish more Nature papers, they say. Why waste all of this. You could be an awesome independent investigator.
A postdoc in big labs would mean another 3 to 4 years abroad of tough work at the World class level chasing more papers and build connections, coming up with original research ideas and applying grants, and then if I ever get lucky I’d get a contract job as a starting independent investigator in a developed country, and remember I probably still can’t enter the US so it definitely won’t be the US, and the salary it’s not princely either.
When I flew home for vacation Mom was aging and my aunt says alahai poor her she already had two sons passed away and won’t you pity her, and on top of that I miss eating rice because it’s an Asian disease.
I picture myself growing old looking back to my old days asking myself would I regret not publishing more Nature papers and be at the forefront of scientific discovery or would I regret not seeing my Mom before she left this World.
The answer was easy.
So I defended my PhD thesis. My reviewers’ comments were generous, somehow one of them think I’m way above most scientists around my stage.
But too bad, I was not going to stay in Science.
So After my PhD I travelled to places in Europe that I always wanted to go and flew home.
Maybe if I eat enough rice I could figure out what to do next in the meantime.
Thank you Vienna and the crazy wild ride of World class Science. It’s been exhilarating and extraordinary and now at least I won’t have any regrets on the Science dream part no more.
I arrived in my home country and I postdoc-ed anyway while looking around what can else I offer to the World while not suffer too badly.
I saw in business news people talk about Cloud, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Data Science, Big Data, Analytics and all the buzzwords get thrown around everywhere I wondered if these people even have coded a single line in their entire life.
I didn’t even know that what I did during my PhD was already Data Science and Big Data because we never call it that way in the academia.
So I took online courses after work and during weekends, read books, get certified in AWS (a Cloud vendor), lurk in online forums, read tech blogs and go to meetups on tech in the city.
As I re-encounter the society people start asked why you’re here, whaddaya mean you’re back for good. You did so well you should have stayed overseas. Wow.
After high school I was told that I was wrong for having my own dreams and didn’t become a doctor, and now I was wrong again for living in my own country.
Society sure is a tough crowd and luckily I never listened haha.
Anyway.
Because being so engrossed in Science for so long has blinded me to the outside World I realized I never understood anything about money. After a decade of hard work in Science with contract jobs and lagging behind my peers in earnings and sharing nice coffee pictures with smart life quotes on Instagram, I thought I should educate myself on finance. So other than taking online courses on AWS my time was filled with reading about finance and economics, interest rates, income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, Shiller PE ratio, present value of future cash flows and all these interesting stuffs.
Maybe I’ll go into finance and see if I can do something that stimulates my brain and see if my life will get an upgrade while I was at it.
Then I joined a bank as a data engineer even though I have neither an engineering nor a business degree. See who’s an engineer now and darn, society was right all along. My first permanent job and my first time in corporate like everyone else.
Shortly after I joined Roche, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the World again as a data engineer.
I suppose now I get to save the World after all. Everyday I get to partner with talented and motivated colleagues around the globe and do many things ranging from software development, engineering critical solutions on the Cloud and yes-this-stuff-goes-to-production-so-please-please-don’t-break-during-vacation (of course it will break no matter how hard you pray), and all the way to machine learning, statistical analyses, artificial data and many more. And all of these on the things that I care about while me being of service to others and use my talent and love of science and technology.
I suppose I’ll have my peace and do ok while I stay in my tropical country with easy access to rice.
And on weekends I go back to my hometown to see my mango and banana trees. So I guess now imma farmer somehow.
I just haven’t gotten around being the fisherman part yet.
Comments