When Romance meets Finance

FYI, I'm thirty years old this year. According to the Malaysian EPF guidelines (check the chart below), I should have 30k RM in my EPF account right now. But, instead, I do not have this amount there. Throughout my lifetime, I worked full time for less than three years and have been paid less than a year for EPF. You may be curious about where I was and what I did all these times. Well, I was studying, I was a student and still am literally. 

The new basic savings schedule according to age (EPF Malaysia)

I'm a Ph.D. student in marine geology. I completed my master's degree in the year 2017. Attended Hokkaido University for an internship during the winter, and started my first permanent position as a Quality Control executive officer in Eastern Steel Malaysia during the summer of 2018. In the spring of the same year, and started my Ph.D. at the Tongji University of China. I have to remind you that before I stepped foot in Japan, I was a pretty much penniless kid. You may not understand how insufficient I was when I used the word penniless. Most kids were funded by their parents before they started working, many still relying on them after they married, but in my case, my parents stopped funding me after my STPM exam (19 years old). Not because they are inadequate, but I wanted it to be so. 

I have a schizophrenic older brother. He was awesome as a teenager, we would cycle me around in the village when we were kids but when he hits 20 years old, he started to hallucinate, hearing voices and seeing things. Since then, he stopped working. Both my parents and siblings have to fund him for his medical bills and daily provision. He needs someone to be around as he couldn't manage his life alone. He was outspoken, but eventually, he lost his friends over the years due to his symptoms. No one would come to visit him now. Today, he smokes and drinks as he has nothing else to do at home. He is a big guy, and he doesn't really listen to anyone's advice. I can understand how lonely he is. He would call me sometimes and send me voice messages telling me his life. Most of them are not true as he was hallucinating. He would create a WhatsApp or WeChat group with my mum and me inside. He would talk there and deleted the group after a while and repeated the same process again. He trusted my mum and me, but sometimes he was unbearable for us when he became abusive and violent during the full moon. I was partly guilty that I cannot provide more trust to him as I often have to hold him down when he became abusive. 

My mum is a housewife. She is so passionate and patient. I would say she gives everything she has to us to make us better men. However, over a decade, no medicine worked on him and we had tried every alternative we could possibly think of. My parents and siblings spent so much time and money hoping to cure his illness. By now, he has at least attended three Christian healing camps, hoping that God can heal him by a miracle. The toughest part is not about looking for a camp but was getting him there. However, we see nothing from God. My brother is still sick today.

To lessen my parents' burden, I applied for a PTPTN loan for my Bachelor's Degree in 2012, about 21k RM of em'. I lived with that 21k for more than three years, surviving with less than 600 RM per month. Sometimes my mum decided to give me extra but I often said no to her. I wanted to be a grown-up. I believe a true man won't spend an extra penny from their parents unless they extremely needed to. I can survive independently, and I wanted my mum to spend for herself and my brother, who needs it a lot more. To be honest, I don't like my dad. He cursed and blamed others too much. I don't like the way he deals with people. I always believe he was one of the contributing factors to my brother's illness when he stopped my brother from going to school when my brother joined a triad gang at the age of 15 years old. I have seen how much he wanted to go to the school but he couldn't as the school was 15 km away. He needs my dad but he has forsaken him. For God's sake, he was only 15 years old. I wanted to help my brother, but I was only 14 years old at that time. That is when he loses trust in my dad.

I have seen how my dad treated my brother and my mum. Sometimes, I dreamed of pulling my dad away and pushing him down to the floor when he beat and choked my brother. I have seen my dad went mad countless times and my mother crying, helplessly sitting on the floor. Now, there is no excuse I would give to my dad to blame any of us for being his burden. I will work my way out, either in starvation or sickness. I don't think they're happy either living that way. My brother is like a Karma or reflection of my dad's sin, who is chasing after him for almost a decade now. My dad will probably die soon as he is old now, and he may see my brother laughing at his tomb if my brother prevails till that moment. This is the price for sin, an eye for an eye.

I won't say I'm a happy-going man, but I learned the other side of life, to love it though it tries to murder you.

I borrowed 4k RM from my mum for flight tickets when I left for Japan. The Jasso scholarship paid around 4.5 k per month, but I have to pay my own rental, which cost me around 1.5 k RM/month. To save up, I have to cook. I couldn't afford to eat in the canteen which costs 20 RM per meal on average. So I would walk for 1.2 km on ice and 1-foot snow to get to the fresh mart. Picked up the wet foods with numb hands and get back to the hostel with an icy wind blowing strong on my back. I had an MCL tear that time, and I remembered falling down on hard slippery ice once. I wore the wrong shoe, which is not suitable for walking on the ice. It worse my tear, and my knee was swollen for about two weeks. 

Sometimes, the harder I fought, the sorer I was.

I started working in the steel company right after the Japan trip for about 3 months and managed to pay my PTPTN loan and the 4k I borrowed from my mum back. Of course, I wasn't living a luxurious life, but I was proud of myself for being debtless. 

Gotten my scholarship for my Ph.D. in Shanghai, I started a new journey to China in September 2018. I was paid extra by my supervisor as living allowances. I lost my scholarship when I was stuck for over a year in Malaysia, but my other Chinese supervisor, who trusted me so much, made up the balance. I didn't get the full amount that I missed, but the damage was minimized. However, a large sum of my saving was frozen in the Chinese bank as my passport expired. I have gotten part of them out, but I still have to travel back there to get them back. I am still paid for the amount I was working in the steel company now, but I will have to convert them into RM which the values may not be the same after the chain of conversion. Nothing comes easy, though. I have to repeatedly prove myself to be competitive among the students. I barely sleep when we have to submit a paper or make revisions on that. I have to keep myself updated though I am working in Malaysia. I can't excuse myself from being as effective as those in China. I have to work it out even though I was sick.

May or may not be contracted by Covid-19; no one lives without the effect of the pandemic. I was very sick for the moment with Delta-variant symptoms such as extreme muscular pains, exhaustion, and gastric. With my tinnitus worsen my condition, I almost died the last Monday (literally). I never felt such a pain in my bowel and lower back before. I thought my kidneys were failing. It was four in the morning, and we were hit by the water shortage in Kuala Nerus, which involved tens of thousands of accounts or more than 100 thousand people running out of water supply at home. The main water pipeline embedded under the Kuala Terengganu river bed was broken for the first time after 30 years of construction. Divers were deployed to identify the leakage location, but the repair work was unimaginably tough. It has been almost a week since then, yet SATU has delayed three times the estimated water resumption date. Some people said Anti-Christ or Dajjal has risen, broken the pipe when he walked shoreward from the water. After all, having diarrhea at this moment is what you never ever wanted to experience. However, I was tested this way. Soon, I was dehydrated, and my visions blurry. I knew I was low in blood glucose and oxygen with oxy-meter tested < 93%. Short of water supply complicates the flushing after usage. The building smells nauseating now, like a mix of butcher house and pig manger.

I have nowhere to run to. I once told my acquaintance that I won't fall if I was not hit by a tornado and earthquake simultaneously, but illness plus water shortage almost killed me. Yet, at this time, do not expect that a hospital can save you. Malaysia is hit by 20k of covid cases daily recently. Unless your blood oxygen falls less than 85%, the hospital won't entertain you. They won't even answer your call. You may run low on phone credit or pass out before someone picking up your call. You are required to stay home if you're asymptomatic. This is life. At a time like this when you're short of water and medical resources, what you can do is to pray, especially when you're under quarantine. 

You can manage your life like a boss and do what you think is right, but your life doesn't belong to you at a time of illness.

I have someone I love so much too and I hope to marry her soon. However, covid can do anything, and the virus almost stopped us. We want to walk in God's will so that our relationship can be a testimony. We may be having different views on life and Christianity, but we still love and care about each other. In a time of quarantine and distance, we still show love by providing each other what we could, let it be times or any possible medical resources via a third party.

In "romance," finance can be a serious thing. 

Back to the story, I think I do a lot better than the standard of EPF, but I'm broke in my own definition when I gauge from my qualification and efforts made at work. Maybe I haven't done enough, or maybe I had overdone it and didn't realize. However, to get into married life comfortably, finance is still a thing to ponder on. I'm glad I'm debt-free, but I have to consider where to live and determine my career pathway. Romance seems to overlook finance in the textbook, but in reality, people seem to rather marry for finance rather than romance.

 Philippians 4:19 says, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

It's hard to comprehend this verse when you suffered from pangs of hunger. When I confronted God, thinking He is dead, claiming He doesn't care a thing about us, He chose to show me otherwise. I had experienced something extraordinary when I was on my sickbed. I didn't mean to tell anyone I need help. By accident, because of the love of Christ and the love from the fellow brother and sister in Christ, I became a topic of prayer in more than 5 countries worldwide. Even a friend of mine called me for consolation, but not knowing it was me until I told him I recognized his voice. Through a long chain of concern, care, love, and help, a Christian NGO named 7979 decided to send over medical supplies to aid recovery due to the shortage of supplies and the covid situation in my region (see picture below). The supplies were separated among five of us, with some of us still under a quarantine. We're still short of water supply, but we see love. However, a few days later, I found a place with water supplies to live in. When I hated God so much due to my self-justification system, He chose to show me otherwise. I may not understand why He allowed my dad to do that to my fifteen-year-old brother, why He wouldn't heal my brother yet, but I now started to accept that maybe there is a purpose behind everything. 

He chose to save who He will and made His presence known to whom He will.

I have decided to play my part too, my responsibility, like how I wanted to play it right to my mum. It was my responsibility to do what is right. So I have decided to restore my walk with God. It's the least I can do. 

And here I found peace. 

We often forgot that our relationship with God is a kind of romance too. However, he doesn't care who we are and our financial status. Because He is the one who is providing. To a marriage as well, true believers receive guidance and can never be inadequate. The Lord provides what we need, and our test can never be heavier than we can bear. Do not be wearied for we are already adequate in His presence. In everything, do it the right way, but do not envy over those who made wealth fast, for that do not last. After all, love God.

Proverbs 28:20 A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. Deuteronomy 8:18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

Till then.