An Usual story of a self-made billionaire who turned Negatives into Optimism

By Noorah Jakaku

We’ve all been struggling in this wave of life aiming for only one thing, Success.

Success is defined by various people according to what they want to achieve in life. For some, it would be to graduate school and get that dream job. For others, it may be to settle down in life with enough to survive on. And then there are the those who think success means amassing a lot of wealth.

Whichever category we fit into, there is still a part of us that looks at those billionaires and think “how did they make all that money?”. Even though there are people who work really hard to get up there, believe it or not, some people reach there without even having any intentions to. Such is the case of Mr. Edward.

Mr. Edward was an unexceptional government employee whose day happily started with his job and family and ended with these two blessings. On a normal day, Mr. Edward saw an advertisement posted on the bulletin for a job vacancy in Vietnam for a year and the one who accepted this offer would be paid 3000 U.S. Dollars along with his current salary.

Mr. Edward like many of his colleagues thought of it as undesirable. After all, who would want to leave their peaceful hometown to live in a communist society. But it wasn’t until life changed for him and a few weeks later his mind changed. He went back to the bulletin searching frantically for the advert only to find that it was gone. He went back home with great regret.

How could he save his family from all the mess that happened few days ago? His son was in trouble when clearly it was not his fault but his friend’s for stealing from the grocery store. And Mr. Edward did not know who had killed the guard who had beaten up his son. Neither did Mr. Edward know that his father along with his older brother had hired some goons to teach the guard a lesson for beating up his grandson. None of them had known that the beating from the goons would result in the guard’s death. All he knew was that he did not want to spend his days in the Police station to be interrogated for this mysterious murder. And then it came again.

The next day when he arrived at office, the advert was put up again by the boss which read “6000 U.S dollars+current salary will be paid for the one who will work in Vietnam for one year.” There was no more thinking. Mr. Edward and his family packed their bags and left their hometown in hope for a better future and away from this mess.

One year passed, and his term contract ended. A second employee was assigned to come to Vietnam this year, but God had other plans for Mr. Edward. For personal reasons, his colleague could not fulfill his promise and offered Mr. Edward 7000 U.S. Dollars to complete this job for him. Fate offered him another year of stay in Vietnam which lead him to earn a total of 140,000 U.S dollars.

When he wanted to return to Taiwan, another issue occurred. We generally focus so much on the negatives in our lives, but we do not realize that there are hidden opportunities for us in it. Mr. Edward dealt with this negative a little differently which turned his fate around. What would you have done after all this hard work and collecting all this wealth and then you come to know that you are not allowed to take it back with you to your hometown? It was impossible that Mr. Edward would leave without his money, so someone advised him to invest in Saigon, a former U.S. colony in Vietnam.

But investing in Vietnam came with another struggle, becoming a Vietnamese citizen . Mr Edward took this challenge with undivided optimism and did all that was necessary. Gaining citizenship and later investing in Saigon, he bought many hotels that previously belonged to the U.S, renovated them and it currently is the most wanted property in South East Asia. For the past twenty years, Mr. Edward owns chains of hotels, which are now managed by his son. He returned to Taiwan recently and is living a life of bliss.

What happened to his colleagues you wonder? They are still government employees earning a stable pay, but grabbing this opportunity due to an incident that at one time made Mr. Edward miserable, turned his life around!