Downwardly mobile

Lifelong defender of the natural world ‘terrified’ by what he is seeing

For the first few months, we slept on mattresses on the floor in my uncle’s spare room. Even when my parents got our own place, we were still sleeping on mattresses on the floor and sharing two rooms. The only furniture we had was what we’d got from garage sales or salvaged from the rubbish. I wore hand-me-downs from my cousins’ friends.

After we’d been in the States a year, my parents separated. When I was 14, I started working in restaurants to help support the family, bussing tables or in the kitchen. In Tennessee, it’s legal to work from the age of 15 and that’s when I felt like I got some independence. From bussing tables, I became a hostess showing people to their tables, to a cashier, to taking care of the drive-through window to pseudo-managing a restaurant.

I worked throughout my middle and high school years, working three or four nights in the week and all through the weekend. I never got enough sleep, so I was always falling asleep in class.

Sex talk

I didn’t tell him it wasn’t consensual because I think it would have killed him. He was the one who made the appointment for me to have an abortion. I think it really killed him inside because he still practises his faith and talks to God, but after the rape I stopped practising my faith.

I graduated early from high school and worked four jobs for a year and a half to save money for college, but the money I earned in that time was only enough to cover one semester of tuition at university in Tennessee.

What next for Hong Kong’s former go-to Cantonese-speaking white actor?

Fit for work

My father wanted to go back to Malaysia, and I went with him and my brothers in 2004. I enrolled to study business administration and mass communication at Kolej Damansara Utama (a university in Kuala Lumpur) and looked after my brothers.

I woke up early, took my brothers to school, then I’d go to work and go to class and back to work, pick them up from school and then go back to work. I’ve no idea how I managed on so little sleep, I think I burned out. I was working at a new fitness centre called Celebrity Fitness and was offered a promotion, but it meant quitting college to go full time.

At the time, it didn’t seem to make sense to pay to learn to do things that I was already doing at work. So, at 20, I was assistant operations manager, the youngest manager in the company, and I became very career-driven. I began in sales, then went into operations and then got my certification to be a personal trainer (PT).

Pole call

The friend who’d introduced me to pole dancing suggested we start a pole dancing school and we did – Viva Vertical started at about the same time I began working as a PT at California. My business partner and I created certification courses for pole dancing and launched throughout Asia, and founded the International Pole Dance Fitness Association.

We were careful operating in a Muslim country. We definitely weren’t going to be rocking up in thongs, bikinis and high heels. We wore sneakers and what you would typically wear to the gym.

How nerd with stage fright became a TedX speaker, career coach and teacher

Up in the air

Then we went into a joint venture with a school in Singapore. Our clients were bankers and lawyers, we drew people from high-stress jobs who wanted something that wasn’t the gym.

When we introduced aerial arts, we drew more interest from stay-at-home mums, women who could afford to not work, and they could afford to come to the classes, so it became a more premium thing in Malaysia. And we attracted people who were active and wanted to challenge themselves and express themselves artistically and not just in the gym.

Asian in Dubai

I was going back and forth between Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, where I was working for a Pilates studio. In 2013, I moved to Hong Kong full time. In 2014, I met my second husband – we got married after two-and-a-half years of dating and moved to Dubai as he had a job offer.

As an Asian in Dubai, I experienced the sort of racism I hadn’t faced since I was a teenager in Tennessee. All my hard work didn’t matter, people assumed that if I looked the way I did I must be the help or the receptionist.

It was too triggering for me, so I jumped on an opportunity to work as a consultant in Spain. My marriage also ended at this time.

Ship captain who rescued a crashed Boeing 747 from Hong Kong’s harbour

The big C

I did the first round of chemo in Spain and moved back to Hong Kong for the next four rounds, which was good because I got a bone marrow match in China and, at the time, China only exported stem cells to Hong Kong and Macau.

I used to think I handled s*** really well – I didn’t talk about it, I dealt with it by suppressing it. Recovering from cancer, I realised the importance of prioritising my mental and emotional health and I started working with therapists for the first time.

Building Mental Muscle

In 2021, I set up my start-up, Mental Muscle, offering workshops to build fitness for the mind and body. I had been out of work for two years. Catching up on that was something that I was conflicted about because to hustle means that you have to compromise health.

After a year of hustling in Hong Kong, I was burning out, so I decided to prioritise my health and moved to Alicante, in Spain, in March. I plan to continue to build Mental Muscle, do marketing for Viva Vertical and also run my podcast, Tackling Minds.

Even though I’m still on anti-suppressants, I don’t feel tired as often. I have more energy, can work out a little harder, can take on more things in terms of brain focus and feel more emotionally stable. And I’ve changed the way I eat.

I realise I used to push my body too hard. I had too much output mentally and physically, with very little input, which is sleep and recovery, and I was also experimenting with diet – it wasn’t a great combination. Now I’m more sensible – I can still lead an active life without trashing my body.