CHAPTER 2 — BOOK III
Taking Fewer Subjects
They did not decide to slow down all at once.
It happened incrementally, through forms half-filled and timetables adjusted at the last minute. A subject removed here. Another deferred without drama. What remained was manageable, intentional.
Embong was the first to articulate it.
“I don’t need to take a full load,” he said one evening, papers spread neatly across the table. “Not yet.”
Geoffrey looked over his shoulder. “You sure?”
Embong nodded. “I want to understand what I’m doing. Not just get through it.”
That settled it.
Embong enrolled in hospitality management through TAFE, easing himself into a discipline that rewarded patience and attention. Kitchens and service schedules made sense to him in ways lectures sometimes did not. He learned systems by watching how people moved within them—how timing mattered, how calm travelled faster than instruction.
Geoffrey’s path was less defined. He enrolled, withdrew, enrolled again. He took classes that interested him and dropped those that didn’t. There was no panic in the indecision. He had learned enough about haste to know it could disguise itself as ambition.
They worked alongside their studies, picking up shifts when it suited them, declining when it didn’t. Money arrived steadily, without urgency. The days filled themselves.
That steadiness had not appeared by accident.
Years earlier, while Embong was still finding his footing after secondary school, Awan had begun consolidating what he had built. In 2004, through his company Sinar Jaya, he acquired a collection of palm oil plantations in Johor from a French firm withdrawing from the region.
The venture proved successful not because it was bold, but because it was careful. The land was managed properly. People were paid on time. Decisions were made with an eye toward years rather than quarters.
Before that, there had been the hotel.
For a time, the family lived in its penthouse—high above traffic, removed enough to observe rather than participate. Embong studied. Hijau worked. Geoffrey drifted between plans, not lost so much as unhurried, learning how ambition looked when it was not rushed.
During term breaks, they left Sydney.
In Kuala Lumpur, they stayed in the penthouse of the hotel Awan had bought. It was not a holiday in the conventional sense. Mornings unfolded without schedules. Afternoons stretched into the heat. Evenings were spent watching the city settle, lights appearing floor by floor until the skyline steadied into something familiar.
None of it was extravagant. None of it was hurried.
It was simply stable.
Occasionally, friends asked when they planned to finish.
“Eventually,” Geoffrey said once, smiling.
Embong shrugged. “No rush.”
The answer unsettled people who measured progress by speed. It did not unsettle them.
They had begun to understand that education was not a race but an arrangement—one that could be renegotiated when circumstances changed. Taking fewer subjects meant more room to absorb what mattered and less pressure to perform a version of success that did not fit.
In quieter moments, Geoffrey noticed how this patience had grown in him. There had been a time when uncertainty felt like failure, when standing still meant falling behind. Now, it felt like space.
They continued their walks, their training, their unhurried routines. Weeks slipped into months without fanfare. Life did not stall. It simply moved at a pace they could live inside.
They were learning, in their own way.
Just not all at once.
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