1966 – Barely three months on the job at Harley Mullion, I submitted my resignation in July 1966. Not that I was unhappy with my work, not that I had secured a better or more satisfying job, but because I had received a letter. A letter that could change my life, my destiny. When I was in Mauritius and after completing the Cambridge Higher School Certificate (Form VII) , and like many other school graduates, I had sent in applications for scholarship for higher studies to a number of Institutions around the world, England, Canada, France, Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka).
I was pretty good at drawing and I love geometry, the straight line and the curve line, the angle and the triangle, the square and rectangle. I often thought that I could be a successful architect, if my family had the financial resources to see me through higher education. My application to the Ceylon scholarship was for a draughtsman course, a fraction of architectural studies. Nonetheless I was satisfied.
I did not know anyone who had the good fortune of obtaining a scholarship and I did not pin my hope too much on this possibility. Then out of the blue, more than a year after my application, I received a letter from the Government of Ceylon offering me a scholarship for one year to study in Colombo. It seemed that the Ceylon Government had gone through the trouble of locating me in Hong Kong, I had not informed any of the Scholarship Institutions of my change of abode. This was a blessing and luck, I thought. I could have been shifted aside.
I was exhilarated with the news, oh my Lord… I was going to a new country to study for a year, all paid for. I must be a lucky person beyond imagination. I had some idea of Ceylon landscape, lush tropical rain forest, tigers and elephants, world famous tea plantation, fabulous temples, the bustling city of Colombo, and I kept picturing myself inside this landscape and dreaming of all the exotic places that I could visit and all the new people that I could meet, a natural fantasy of any young lad. Hence the reason for my resignation.
The Tranquility of the Ceylon landscape would have taken my breath away.
Buddhist Temple in Ceylon
The majestic tiger of Ceylon as I had imagined in 1966
Truthfully I was placed at a crossroad between staying in Hong Kong and accepting the Colombo scholarship. Would I miss Hong Kong, yes I would, but I did not blink. I would go. I was to leave in August that year, giving me a couple of weeks of free time to enjoy the rest of the stay. What my future would be as a result of this deviation, no one knew and I never bothered to attempt at a guess. Quite often people find themselves at a crossroad, and the path they choose would determine their future, their good fortune, their destiny. My life and destiny too would change completely if I had gone to Colombo, as it was a condition of the offer that I should return to my home country to work for at least one year. Returning back to Hong Kong after that seemed an improbability.
Then came the rain! I received a second letter from Colombo. Not a good news but not as disastrous as to deny me the scholarship. There had been an error in the attendance date made by the University Administration. School was to start way later in November, not in August. I had therefore to wait and linger for another three months. Three boring months without a job, without an income, without something to keep me occupied, I would be reckless. I struggled for a week, my mind could not stop debating, what should I do, wait patiently or give up the scholarship. For the first time I started to make an assessment of my future, would I really benefit from the scholarship. When I returned to Mauritius after the study were there career potential in draughtsmanship. Hong Kong was booming in the 1960’s, career prospects for people with good English language skill were enticing. Hong Kong was attracting foreign companies, European and American and more, to set up shop, open offices, open factories, my skills were in great demand. Mauritius, though a paradise island in itself, was comparatively a backwater to Hong Kong in terms of commerce, trade and economic activities. Hong Kong was on a different league. Further my friend Cyril and I had recently made acquaintance with a couple of beautiful Hong Kong office ladies, one destined to become my better half. Was this the final straw, I could not tell.
Mind set, I wrote back to Ceylon and respectfully renounced their offer. I guessed the second letter from Colombo had put me a second time on a crossroad in my life, and I liked to think that the second letter offset the first letter. I was back to where I was.
Moving forward I would find myself standing at many more crossroads in my life. Sometimes I would rewind and imagine that I had taken a different road and tried to envision the consequence or result of taking this alternate path. My parents believed that everything was written even before you were born. As a matter of fact my father had a soothsayer check the future of all the children as soon as we were born. The prediction was based on the time and date of birth and gender of the child, I still had mine written on a sheet of paper, now turning yellowish after almost three quarter century, written in pencil, and I have kept this piece of document till today. Many older Chinese also believe destiny is preset and I fervently believe it too. In some way when I have to choose a path, it is already written and predestined that I would take this path, there is no avoidance. In one of the Chinese Historical TV dramas that I have recently watched and enjoyed, and I have watched quite a handsome, I noted a saying which summed it all: Whatever path you choose is fine so long as at the end you have no regret.
This is my prediction written by a Soothsayer in 1946 with pencil on paper