Hopefully your daily new infections rate will start coming down soon with the lockdown.

Dreadful having not much freedom to move around.

How is the lockdown affecting you?

Hopefully you will be able to cope. I know in Sydney, a lot of people have anxiety symptoms showing up.

Sad that this is happening all round the world - hopefully we will have some good news in the not too far future.

I have always been an active person running around with friends (i have so many friends) but since mid-March, i have to work from home. It was fun initially working from home but after a while, it got boring esp with the winter months and the inability to go out due to the cold. Hopefully winter will be over soon and i can start becoming a little more active.

I used to go out with big groups of old Malaysian friends having dinners and parties weekly. All that is gone now since we are all in the high-risk group (all mostly over 60) and eating out is now becoming a risky proposition. I suspect having get-together(s) with friends will become harder and harder and it may be a long while for things to be back to what it was.

how many of you got affected by the pandemic? in terms of job and money? how do you cope it?

I am unable to move back to Melbourne. Although my main job is not full time there, my main source of income still from KL.

It's the work culture and communication skills and the fact they don't trust "work experiences" from outside, even those in other English speaking countries.

How much you need is subjective and depends on your style of life. A big chunk will go to housing, in major cities, 300-800 a week depending on city and suburb. Regional usually cheaper, but not always. CBD and inner suburbs much more.

The normal way isn't going around looking for jobs paying 120k...it's looking for any job, and hope it pays reasonable. Most entry level graduate jobs starts at 50+k...you will have to build it up slowly through promotions, and job hopping.

This is one aspect most difficult for middle aged migrants....at 40+, most are at middle level jobs in Malaysia, but have to downgrade to fresh graduate level starting a new life and career in another country. Sometimes even need to downgrade to below qualification. A relative who was a middle management banker eventually had to settle for a sales job selling Telco prepaid cards initially.

Thanks for setting the expectations. I can imagine what you are saying and we are aware of this, that makes us wonder if it is all well worth it at the end of the day. There is no gold at the end of the rainbow but solely based on belief that the current struggles will be better for the children. Both fingers crossed.

Btw, are you currently in Australia?

That is what a lot of my friends say but is this due to people finishing work on time? I am not so sure if these day and age if PR in Aussie still get off jobs on the dot at 1700 or 1800 hour? Thoughts?

I agree with your viewpoint that all the shout out about unfair policies does not really affect us because we are hardworking and as you said will buy property without caring about bumi and non-bumi benefit. And I also agree that our children should not leech off any welfare wherever we end up in.

Actually, we live semi comfortable lives in Malaysia.We don't have big business venture like those investor or factories in Cambodia or Vietnam. My husband is salary man and he is happy where he is at. I run a small business, we have enough. But we are not young, like many of you said, at 40, to restart and re-climb the corporate ladder may be hard for him if he is the sole breadwinner in a foreign land.

We just thought going over will change our children lives. By how, we do not know. The thought of migration is basically for our family to open a second door in case things go south back home. We dont intend to give up our citizenship and will likely to retire in Malaysia as it is cheaper, better weather, food, relatives, etc.
Good to know. Work life balance (WLB) is commonly practice if work for MNC in Malaysia. My husband company only require staff to go to office twice per week, so we save a lot of time and travel during the pandemic. Even without the pandemic, he has full freedom on when to go office or not.

However, with the current economy and poor choice of policies, not many MNC or investors are coming to Malaysia so if he leaves this job, I dont think there are many companies that offer this kind of benefits.

I think that is the kind of ideal life in Aussie that the manager trust the team to have the work delivered according to deadline.   
Yes, not much has changed with the BN/PN being untouchable. If you follow Malaysia news or FB post, you can see ministers have special treatment over the people. I think I will remain anxious until we land and find a job stability, but really thank you for your feedback - it means much to us.

it is, but i need to correct a bit.

In Malaysia, my first child is now in a decent pre-school. I am paying about RM 900 per month for montessori, not to say the super expensive one. but is another different method that Kinder.

She is getting alot of positive teachings from her Malaysian teachers. And since she entered the school, she became more independent than her cousins, she is entering 6. My wife thought it is her atttitude that followed my DNA, but when we attended New Year party last year, i was surprised to see other kids behave the same. Though i can't say much because she is only early stage but definately better than before she enter about 1.5 year ago.

and i think Independent is very subjective word to use. Some kids who do not attend school until age 5 here in Malaysia were independent already, because of home teaching. I do also surveyed many schools recently with my SIL's children, standing outside of classrooms and see how kids react. It is surprisingly many kids are different from our time. Not like silent or shy when the teacher asking questions, i visited both government and chinese vernacular school.

It is always a growing perception Malaysian parents are being brainwashed that overseas syllabus are better or moving to study overseas are better.

As a parents and adult, we need to be rational to not think the 3rd world country education system is always bad. This mentality will affect alot of genuine teachers who have the true passion to teach. I once met up with a group of teacher from a school for some job related, you know the most unfair thing for them to hear? Kids who are graduated from their school that are being send to overseas, mentioning Malaysia education is low quality, how in the first place the kid can pass the prerequisite to enter good college overseas? Because the childrens are entitiled, doesn't mean that they should degrade this teaching, it is equivalent to degrading the teachers. I was like that, and I have changed.

And in the end what will happen to the passionate teachers? they will be always the one that get blamed for nothing by the rich and entitled.

memorising? you mean very traditional way of government schools?

Sorry to say, I believe this thinking is outdated as my kids arent memorizing anything until today, neither her future schools that I already surveyed. there are many choices now in Malaysia, from public to private. There are plenty of schools now in Malaysia follows the international teaching methods. When I was in Melbourne U i also require to memorizing facts. Taylors, Sunway private too.

There are plenty of choices in Malaysia and Singapore now, we do not have to generalize the schools that you attended 'memorizing' 'uncritical thinking' applies to all the schools. I can recommend you links of the choices if you want. There are so many of them now compared to our time.

again, I think we need to stop the perception and assumption of schools are always better at a foreign land.

You cannot talk about QLD as one place, as it is a huge state, that stretches a very long way latitude wise.

Generally you can divide it into 2. The southeast part is where the majority of population lives, and has a sub-tropical climate, essentially a long warm summer (9 months), and a short cool winter (3 months). It seldom gets very cold (average low teens), and also, seldom very hot either.

Very similar to places like Taiwan/HK, Florida etc.

The northern half is basically tropical, not unlike Malaysia year round.

Mosquitos and flies are everywhere in Australia...lol

Visit it lah, it's typical Australia, except without the crazy Syd/Mel costs.

Perfect retiree location....lol. In fact Sunshine Coast is the most popular retirement home location: spaced out, slow paced, cheap, and miles of beaches and sunshine, without the tourists! A top notch UQ University Hospital, and yet only just over an hour to Brisbane.

Yes - everyone in Sydney told me not to come back to KL so soon. My uncle who usually lives in KL (aged 83) and has PR in Aust panicked last minute and decided to wait - he was supposed to come back 10 days before me.

I don't think the situation in Msia will get much better even after a few months. People in Msia have a different mentality from Australians. When i was in Sydney during the outbreak last year in March to Sept, we hardly came out of our home. I notice people here in Msia loves going out and finds it very hard to stay home. Maybe it is the culture of the society.

My retiree friends in Sydney are all happy with the strength of the Aussie dollar and the world share markets indices. Everyone of my retiree friends in Sydney is feeling very confident - all splashing money by going out to eat a lot and buying new cars!! Superfunds in Aust are all performing well and the baby boomers are the lucky generation. On the contrary, business people in Msia seem quite pessimistic about the way the Msian economy is going. Makes me a bit guilty splashing money when all my friends in KL seems to be cutting back on their expenses 

All my friends and relatives in Sydney tend not to go out much and usually stay at home a lot even before Covid days. Malaysian visitors would visit us and tells us our lives in Aust are boring!! But that is the culture in Australia. I have lived in Sydney since 1981 and this is the type of lives (quiet) we lead over there. When i come back to Msia for my holidays, people here are all the time busy going out which is totally different to the type of lives that Aussies live.

I am quite okay with staying home all the time because i have been doing very much that in Sydney. Now it is getting cold in Sydney due to winter while it will be much warmer here in KL which is what i like. I kind of enjoy being back in KL now even though the Covid cases are high - money wise my wife and i are very comfortable. All our relatives in KL are happy we are back but we will not be seeing them any time soon  . Got to be a bit careful so we don't want to see anyone yet for at least a couple of months.

Good on you my friend!

i guess 25km is not really that bad and A$650k is fairly affordable. I guess if you had parents to help you, you will probably have done it earlier.

Most of my retiree friends in Sydney have always expressed that without helping them with a good deposit, their children would never have been able to buy in. We are the lucky generation where assets were a lot cheaper 30-40 years ago. Even though my retiree friends have quite a lot of passive income coming in through their super and rental income, most of us are still pretty thrifty because we have been living a life like this throughout our working lives and being first-generation migrants is not easy    as most of you guys would know.

How fair of the government, to distribute this equally  Not sure why they aren't phased by crime when the public housing residents will have to live beside the rich in some suburbs vs those closer to their own income level.
Ghettos will probably form anyway at some time or another when they obtain some upward mobility.

Msia has reached 13k cases/day yesterday - how are things back home so far? My parents/friends feel like the gov is dropping the ball so badly. 

Seems like even with best English scores and age bracket, the Australian work/study experience is what will get you over the line 

That or PhD or 8+ years work (but then you have to be careful not to slip out of the right age bracket). Tricky