I know a number of people who went to Australia, got permanent residency and returned home (Malaysia or Singapore) after 8 years or more.    The ones I know are teachers, lawyer, accountant, school principal and sales managers.
I am asking because one uncle has been asking me so many times to go there (they renting a new place in Doncaster) but I heard life over there is good if you live in the Asian dominated suburbs.  He sold his A$450,000 home after getting random racial abuses and spray painted words on his fence.   He and his family only use the car to go in and out from his Frankston  home, never walk outside home or hang around at the bus stop to take the bus.  '


Are things so much better over there or is exaggerated?   Anyone else gone there before to live for a while?

As for the point about bamboo ceiling – I think this is a cop out. I am starting to believe this is a byproduct of Asian Confucius culture i.e. respect, not question elders, savings face and all that. There are a bunch of successful Indian CEOs in fortune 500s (Pepsi Co, Microsoft, McKinsey). No yellow faces. Why? The corporate world isn’t just simply about being technically competent and expecting to be promoted every 2-3 years because you do the same thing day in day out (like maybe in Japan). It’s about building personal relationships which is hard for Malaysians to do I Australia because there is little cultural commonality that allows you to build that most basic link in the first instance (what’s cricket and afl?). Question: If you did the most brilliant piece of analysis at work, and only you knew about it, did you actually do the work? Answer: The answer is no you didn’t. If no one knows about your work, if you don’t share it, tell people about it, no matter how technically brilliant you are, in everyone’s mind, you and your work don’t exist. This isn’t about shameless self-promotion which I know is what the majority of you are thinking, this is about communicating. I was hired for this function, I did this work, and it probably is valuable. Now I need to be proactive about sharing that work, rather than just sending an email to my boss, or waiting for my boss to tell me what do . The reality is, culture and the Malaysian education system brought most of you up to obedient followers and not question anything. Just do you work and speak when i tell you to speak. I always tell this anecdote to illustrate this point. I was waiting in the autogate line at the LCCT. There were three machines. One was clearly out of order. One had no line behind it. The remaining machine had a small but growing line. I joined this line. Not wanting to wait, I asked the gentleman in front, do you know why no one is using that machine is it broken? He said he didn’t know. I waited another 30 seconds, during which time more people joined our line.  I decided it was worth trying to use the machine with no line. Guess what? It worked. Everyone just assumed it was broken. As soon as I got through, the single line split in two. Believe it or not, Australia is far more of a meritocracy than Malaysia will ever be, where if you work for anything remotely government related, you will eventually hit a bumi-ceiling. So yes, that does mean if you are a bumi, you would be unwise not to stay and take advantage of all the advantages the system provides whether explicit or not.