Why I Came Home

People ask me this all the time. Wasn't Sydney good? You had a career there, connections, things were going well. Why would you leave? Sometimes it comes with a slight tilt of the head, like the question they're really asking is: did something go wrong?

Nothing went wrong. That's the whole point.

What I Actually Built There

Three years in Sydney. I didn't just study. I worked, I pushed, I got my hands into things. At some point, I won first prize in a competition run by the Australian Financial Review, $5,000 and a feature that put my name in front of the industry. People started to know who I was. Job offers came. The momentum that takes years to build was finally building.

The AFR feature, October 2024. First prize, $5,000. The kind of thing that looks like a reason to stay.

Sydney, at Above Advisory. I worked as Social Media Marketing Manager under Molly Lim, an award-winning founder (2025 IFPA Award, Top 50 Women in Accounting 2024, 2024 Small Business Advisor Award). She is one of the reasons Sydney taught me what it taught me.

I'm saying this not to brag, but because it matters for what comes next. I didn't leave because Sydney failed me. I left because I got clear.

外婆

Before I flew to Sydney in April 2022, my grandmother passed away.

外婆 and me. She told me to go wherever I needed to go to grow. She also taught me what coming home means.

She had always told me: go wherever you need to go to study, learn, grow. Education is yours. Chase your dreams. She believed this without hesitation, without condition. So even in grief, I knew she would have wanted me to go.

But something shifted after she left. I had always assumed I'd see my family every day, the way you take for granted something that has always just been there. And then one morning it wasn't. I realised: oh. It was never guaranteed.

I carried that thought to Sydney. It sat quietly in the background for a while.

The Math That Broke Me

Somewhere in 2023 or 2024, I read The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. One idea in particular stopped me cold.

The calculation is simple and brutal: take your parents' estimated lifespan, subtract their current age, then multiply by the number of days you actually spend with them each year. That final number is all the time you have left with the people you love most.

When I ran that number for myself, sitting in Sydney, it was small. Uncomfortably small. And the only variable I could actually control was the last one.

The only way to move that number in a meaningful direction was to change where I lived. 外婆's passing had planted the idea. The book gave it a shape I couldn't look away from.

The Flip

Here's what people get wrong when they hear I moved back: they assume something pulled me away from Sydney. A failure. A giving-up. A settling.

But I didn't leave because I couldn't make it there. I left because I got clear on what I was actually building toward. And Sydney wasn't it.

Going abroad was never about staying abroad. I went to see how the world works, to sit inside a different culture's way of doing things, to stress-test my own assumptions. I needed that. But the point was always to come back better, not to stay because staying felt like winning.

The AFR feature, the connections, the career traction. None of those were reasons to stay. They were proof that I could build something from anywhere. Including home.

Malaysia Is the Arena

I don't see myself building a family in Australia. I don't see my life rooting there. And if that's true, if Malaysia is where I want to plant everything that matters, then every year I spend somewhere else is a year borrowed against a future I keep delaying.

There are more opportunities in Malaysia than people give it credit for. I believe that without apology. What I'm building with Dodeez, I want to build from here, for here, and eventually from here to the world. Not despite being Malaysian. Because of it.

My grandmother told me to go chase my dreams. I did. And what I found, while chasing them, is that my real dream includes being present for the people who matter most. Coming back isn't a contradiction of what she taught me.

It's the completion of it.

The Question, Answered

So when people ask me: wasn't Sydney good, why would you leave, here is my honest answer:

Sydney was good. It gave me exactly what I went there for. And then I came home, because I know where I want to build my life. That clarity is not a small thing. Most people spend years chasing the right kind of success in the wrong place, because they're afraid that choosing home means choosing less.

I don't think that anymore.