“I’m away from home for almost a month each time I travel for work, and that happens very often in a year.

I’m a product installation engineer, and I basically travel to customer sites – mostly Taiwan and Korea as of late – to install and calibrate high-end machinery before customers like Samsung and Intel put them into production.

It was hard at the beginning; I got homesick a lot. I would miss my family, my friends, my cats and of course my mother’s cooking. When you travel so much, you appreciate the small things more. But I’m a pretty sociable person and I make friends easily, so that makes working overseas easier.

Travelling is great; you get to meet new people, see new places and experience different cultures. I’m now in this situation where if I’m overseas for work, I want to come home sooner, but when I’m home, I can’t wait to fly off again. I guess I just got accustomed to this lifestyle.

Settle down? I don’t think my current lifestyle is necessarily hindering me from settling down. I’m someone who believes that things will always happen naturally given its time.

You only have one life to live; if you’re going to do it, do it right, not because people are pressuring you. At the end of the day, the ones pressuring you aren’t the ones living your daily life.” – Alfian, 35