About me

I was born and brought up in Miri an oil town in Sarawak (Borneo). I attended Pujut Chinese Primary, St. Joseph's Miri and Tanjong Lobang School. (I was at Tanjong for two years as a boarder doing 6th form, 63/64) I worked for Shell Lutong for 23 years and have lived in NZ for 15 years. I am married to Christine Wong. We have 3 grown children: Kevin, Pearl and Eugene.

I retired from full time work at age 58 in Hamilton (2002). After a few months, the prospects of looking at 20 years of annual leave got to me (I became bored with doing nothing). I enrolled as an English tutor, did a short course in Hamilton and taught English to new migrants for 3 years (2-hour/week) During this time I was also involved with working for the Salvation Army (5 hrs every morning on Mon, Tue, Wed). During this initial retirement period, I also played golf in the afternoons. There was a gap of 25 years during which time I have not touched a golf club. I took up sailing as a hobby in the early 80's and played some tennis.

Soon, in NZ I became a serious golfer again, playing 3 or more rounds a week. In the end, I found that the volunteer work interfered with my golfing schedules and it was also too warm in the afternoons to golf. I stopped doing all volunteer work in the mornings and decided to play golf full time. I found that golf was not enough to fill all my free time. I intensified sailing as a second hobby and took part in regattas every Sunday and exploring the many lakes and harbours in the North Island. When the weather was not suitable for golfing and sailing, I blog. I became a very active blogger with more than 50 blogs.

Missing the volunteer work and the human interactions, I have now replaced that with cyber volunteer work on the internet helping new bloggers all around the world. I am now a blogging guru. This work is less demanding; but just as satisfying as the previous type of volunteer work. The interactions with different bloggers were very rewarding for me and satisfied a deeper need inside all of us to make contact with other people on common ground. I am also an active participant on the extanjong forum (human interactions) and have formed another Google group for ex-Shell employees (SSB). I have recently started a group on Face Book for Overseas Sarawakians. I am constantly looking for new ways to fill my time. I have even considered taking up photography seriously as a hobby.

Sharing my own retirement experience with you, will hopefully help some of you, who are my friends, during this difficult transition period from full time work to no work. Please remember that it is a fact that you do not need money to retire. The secret is in keeping busy and learning to phase out the extravagant life style (5 stars hotels) and begin to live within our reduced budget and accepting our new identity as a retired person.

The simple truth is this: No one is able to save enough money to maintain the same standard of living for retirement because we do not know exactly how long we will live. There is no bottom line. It is therefore impossible to plan financially for our retirement. For this same reason we must retire now, today; and not work until we die. This can happen tomorrow or even sooner, tonight, in our sleep! :)

David

a very retired person
(according to Chang Yi, a friend)