Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Understanding Is the Root of All Forgiveness

I have four older siblings—three older sisters, and one older brother:  Mary, Cary, Emily and Dick.  Dick passed away when he was five, either from receiving an incorrect shot or experiencing a bad reaction to a vaccination.  I did not know about Dick until I was 18 years old.  It explained many things that never made sense—the large age gap between my sisters and me, and the fact that my father was overly protective.

It was shortly after Dick died that my parents were given an opportunity to immigrate to Canada.  My fourth aunt on my dad's side had sponsored us to come over.  My mother jumped on the opportunity, and although it meant giving up everything familiar, my parents took my sisters to Canada.

My family arrived in Ottawa in 1981, and lived with my fourth aunt, Jane.  Unfortunately, shortly after we arrived, Jane's husband passed away.  My family moved to Toronto because my grandfather wanted my sisters to learn Chinese, which was more widely available.  My youngest uncle was also sponsored and brought his family over to Toronto.  The two families with six children were all cooped up in a tiny house owned by my Uncle David.

My dad worked as a waiter, and my mom was carrying me in her belly.  They would argue at night because my mother was unable to find work.  She told me the happiest day of her life was when she was able to land a job washing dishes for a restaurant.  Back in the day, they would interview you by seeing how many dishes you could wash given a set amount of time.  This was the job she did while I was still in her belly.

Life was difficult; poverty and the tight space for eight people caused many misunderstandings.  One night, my youngest uncle got locked out of the house, and after a long day of work gave my sister Emily a whipping for locking the door.  With that, my parents knew they had to move houses.  For a while we were renting a room in Kensington market.  I was born during this time.  My parents worked hard for the next four years and saved enough money to buy our first home, 52 Augusta Avenue.  This house was a blessing; the owner was a kind man, and introduced my dad to work at Sunnybrook Hospital. Working in the hospital is like working in the government; the job provided stable income and was very high paying compared to the other jobs my parents had.  The house was three stories high, and had a basement.  We were able to rent out the first floor and basement, and this was the turning point in my family’s financial situation.  Because of their frugal nature, my parents were able to overcome poverty.

I was as sickly as a child. Most of my memories are of being in the hospital with a fever or sickness of some sort.  I remember it caused my family a great deal of stress.  Reflecting on it now, I realized that most of the time it was my parents’ overreaction to any slight cough or sneeze.  My dad immediately would take me to a doctor or to the hospital late at night.  It wasn't until I went to visit my third aunt in Nova Scotia and learned to keep quiet about things that I was able to control my life.

When I was growing up, my father treated me like a student.  He would train me each day in math and Cantonese.  I hated it.  My normal school work would only last an hour, but he would give me enough homework to last me four or six hours each day.   On weekends he would teach me from early morning to late evening.  If I were lucky, we would learn how to draw or paint, but most of the time it was math and Cantonese.  My dad would get books from a local Chinese library and teach me from a chapter a week.  I grew to dislike Chinese because it represented the lack of freedom I had growing up as a child.  I eventually developed my own phonetic system because it was too hard to memorize the characters without context.  I would use a pencil and mark the pronunciation of each character.  Math came easily to me because I saw its use in my day-to-day life, as well as how it was a way to show my uniqueness in school.

My father always would keep a close watch on me.  He would highly regulate what I ate, and also with whom I spent time with, and on what I spent time.  You may wonder how he was able to do this while being far away at the hospital.  He had a few ways that made my childhood feel like prison.  Every morning, I would rise at 7 a.m. to work out with him in the local park.  Each weekday, he gave me a notebook in which to record my behaviour. It was one of those yellowish-orange cardboard binders with three metal tabs so he could add fresh sheets of lined paper, and my teacher would draw a happy or sad face in it for the day with pen or pencil, and once or twice with a heavy crayon marker that bled through the pages.  Most of the time I got the happy faces, but I remember the verbal abuse I suffered if I got an unhappy face.  Next, after school, to ensure that I would be home on time, he would call me five minutes after the day had ended.  At 3:05 p.m. I needed to be home to answer the phone or he would know that I was outside.  Over the years, I countered this by running home to answer the phone and running back out again to play hockey or go to a friend’s house.  He eventually found out, and started calling again at a random time after 3:05.  Again I countered by getting my grandma to answer the phone, or by staying for the first hour before leaving on my adventures.  At night, he would force me to go swimming with him at the local community pool.

This robotic routine continued until I was about to enter high school and we had moved to our new home.  I met up with my dad and informed him that I would not be able to function normally if this were to continue.  Surprisingly, he stopped most of the calling and early-morning exercise, but he still insisted on weekend Cantonese lessons. 

When I was young, I was very angry with my parents.  I felt I had been robbed of my childhood, and their frugal lifestyle made it hard to make friends because I had little to nothing in common with my peers.  However, after discovering that my brother had died at such a young age, I began to understand their protective nature.  After hearing about my parents’ rough life growing up, I understood that the fear of poverty dictated their lives.  Once I saw and was able to understand this, I was able to forgive.

Often in business, we assume the other party is trying to pull a fast one on us. However, when you really dig deep, you can see why the other party is behaving the way they do. As Buddha said, to know all is to forgive all.