If I think about the brightest and the most intense memory from Canberra, I think about a day spent in a shopping centre with my laptop translating an passage for the UNSW Masters of Translation and Interpreting program where I really wanted to study back then. Why is this memory so intense and how does it link to my current life? I think because in that moment, I wasn’t sure that my efforts would take me to some place. Even though I worked hard on being accepted into that master program, at the back of my mind, I was wondering if that was the right thing to do. I know now that a lot of things we do in life, we aren’t sure about, and it’s Ok to have doubts. What’s more important is to keep acting on our ideas and one day these ideas will materialise in a visible outcome. Three years after that day sitting in the mall, I was working in a translation and localisation company in London. Even though my job wasn’t to translate the text, but to proofread and test it in a video game, I felt a sense of fulfilment. For many years I wanted to try and work in the translation industry, and eventually a right opportunity showed up at my door steps. 

Some ideas are too fragile and don’t stick around in our consciousness, but some ideas are so deeply ingrained into our emotional and physical being, we keep being driven back to them. For these kind of ideas, I have a special place in my soul. Not always can I explain why certain ideas need to be implemented, but I keep them in my memory, and do a little bit at a time to make them happen. After all, these ideas constitute who I am and how I sit in the world, how I relate to others, and perhaps, the value I want to bring into my community.