JOHN MAK – HONG KONGbwmak
 My name is John Mak, from Hong Kong. I have a wife Rita and two sons Wesker 15 and Terry 12.
After 20 years of teaching I just want to change my job, a new change because life is not so long and I need new experiences.

I got a visa under skilled migration with my wife, and the Australian authorities approved my qualifications but I don’t want to teach here because my English is not so good and I don’t understand the culture. My wife and I are currently enrolled in full time English classes.

I think the Gold Coast is very suitable for us. In HK we had good jobs with good salaries, however life is short and everyone should try to experience more in this world.

I left HK because of the environment after the 1997 hand over. I could see that the education system was not very good. The benchmarking of teachers is very severe and the workload and high stress means there is no time to think about how to improve the students. During the days in HK, I had to train the basketball team, manage the IT, talk with suppliers, and do training courses plus teaching. I was exhausted. Students were 5 days but teachers were 6 days or more with the other activities.

I want to do some other business, importing clothing and footwear from China, but now my visa has expired and I can’t go back and forth to HK. So my plans now have to change, I need in a short time to strengthen my English and my network of human relationships. I have no work here at the moment, only voluntary jobs.

If I don’t get a job I will get frustrated and it will be bad for my children to think that perhaps I am lazy or incompetent.

This is part of my life tour, and I need to be concerned for my children’s prospects, to build some strength and make them competitive so they can come with me on my adventures and to have a global mind. If they have good English it will be a big advantage if they stay in Australia or return to China.

My dream is to be a business trader, in college my major was business management and marketing, but at graduation time the economy was not so good, so I took teaching. Now it is time to return to my training.