Escape The City

If you are or know someone who's considering a career change, you might find www.escapethecity.org helpful - largely based in the UK, this site seeks to provide a forum for people who are thinking of escaping the city (ie the City in London, but it can also apply to other cities!) for "greener" pastures.

I'm featured as a "Hero" on the site (ha!), for having escaped law for the charity sector. Some of the tips and experiences which I shared have been reproduced below - hope you'll find something helpful!

2) What did you do before this?

Well, I did quite a few things!

My first job was with a London magic circle law firm where I trained and qualified as a corporate lawyer. I was with this firm for 4 years. I know plenty of people who enjoy their lawyer jobs but for me I thought life was too short to be stuck in something I wasn't passionate about!

After I left in late 2007 I tried different things in international development and human rights, which included working with an NGO in relief and development (Tearfund) and interning with a couple of human rights think tanks. This summer my husband and I also volunteered on a residential project with street children in the Philippines, which was absolutely awesome.

3) What was your moment of truth?

It's hard to pinpoint to a particular moment which changed everything, though I have to say that having a teacher-turned-explorer boyfriend then (now husband) who was cyclinghalf way across the world just because that's what he wanted to do certainly didn't help!

I was also reading Richard Nelson Bolles' other less well known book How to Find Your Mission in Life and found it rather inspiring.

And I loved what John Eldredge said in Wild At Heart: Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

4) How did you plan for it?

On one hand I wanted to have had something lined up before I left my corporate law job (I was, after all, a lawyer, so was naturally rather risk averse) but my hours were so long and there just wasn't any physical or head space to think about anything, so I had nothing planned as such when I finished my notice. I was really in need of a break though so was glad to have 4 months off.

During the break I rested and tried to regain perspective, and after that I spent a whole month talking to everyone and anyone who was willing to talk to me about the international development and charity world (I asked my friends for any contacts they were happy to give me) and built up my network that way. I found my first job through doing that!

Taking a few months off might not be a viable option for some, but I was fortunate enough having saved up a bit of money and I didn't have any mortgage or babies to worry about.

5) What have been the best and worst things about making this happen?

The best thing is that even though nowadays I'm still busy and sometimes working longish hours (nothing compared to the City though!), I'm doing something I'm passionate about and I no longer feel chained to my job because of some unknown fear/feeling of loss if I walked away from it.

Can't really think of the worst thing really.... obviously one has to go through lots of soul searching about one's own identity when one jumps ship, and I felt scared and vulnerable and insecure at various points, but it's all part of a very good growing up experience (with the benefit of hindsight I can of course say this now...). I talk about some of my struggles on my blog.

6) What is the best advice you have received?

Try not to give too much weight to people who tell you that it cannot be done - because there will always be people who are pessimistic / risk averse / or for whatever reason think you're mad!

The flip side of this is to talk to everyone and anyone who's happy to chat with you - you'd never know what you might learn or who they might point you to.

Got a burning question? Go ahead and ask me something.

7) What resources or information have you found really helpful?

What Colour is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles.

I love Don Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - a hugely inspirational read, Don talks about living life as a story, which is an excellent way to go about living your life, so you'll be intentional about leading an interesting, meaningful life (which often requires some risk taking!).

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like So What Do You Do?, The Unedited Version and How Will You Measure Your Life.

So what do you do?

This article was pitched as part of a series for a paper in Singapore but it was dropped (sob!) as the paper didn't want to encourage a trend for corporate exodus (!!!)

Thought I should post it here nonetheless for those who haven't got bored of reading about escaping the corporate life :)

So what do you do?

I dreaded that question 3 years ago but it was impossible to avoid being asked precisely that at dinner parties.

In November 2007 I had taken the leap and left my glamorous job as a corporate lawyer in London to instead pursue an alternative career in the charity sector. To my surprise the transition left me shaken inside and I found many things difficult, including how to introduce myself to new acquaintances. I felt embarrassed admitting that I was in transit to an unknown new world, despite the frequent response of admiration (which sometimes was accompanied by bewilderment). The temptation was always there to drop in a line or two about how I used to work for a top law firm.

Equally challenging was the moment when everyone exchanged sleek-looking business cards and I would stand there feeling self-conscious. When my turn came I would apologise that I didn’t have a card, and joke that I should have prepared a homemade one. Perhaps my card would read: “Searching for a Job in International Development Relating to Children, Ideally if Previous Legal Skills can be Used”? And maybe “Ex Corporate Lawyer” should feature at the front, underlined, in case people didn’t think much of the convoluted title?

Having grown up in Singapore in my teens and succeeding all my life in the traditional sense (straight A student, Dean’s list in law school, scholarship to Oxford, high flying first job), I found it extremely hard to actually believe that I as a person was not defined by the parameters of conventional success. For months after I exited the revolving glass doors of Allen & Overy, I struggled not to view myself through the coloured lens by which I used to pigeonhole others: their jobs, their “proven” abilities; their financial status. I was also shocked to discover that I had those biases ingrained in me.

And there were other difficult aspects of the transition to deal with. All of a sudden, I found myself having to check my bank account balance and actually do some budgeting - such was the degree of my previous recklessness with my finances that I never knew how much money I had at any one point! Neither was I aware of the cost of, say, a red pepper in the supermarket, or a starter at a restaurant, as I threw things into my shopping trolley, or ordered from the menu without paying much attention to the numbers. I thought that was normal.

Socially, it wasn’t easy either. When going out with friends who also had lucrative jobs, it became necessary to have awkward conversations about how to split the bill. I had to muster all I had to fight the feeling of “losing face”. Also, I couldn’t attend the dinner at my best friend’s birthday bash at a posh restaurant but could only manage to join the party for a drink afterwards. For a natural people pleaser (with a delicate self esteem), all this proved to be very difficult, but these situations forced me to examine some of the deep seated attitudes in me and the motives behind what I used to do.

Looking back, it was a tough period of time, and writing about it has even depressed me slightly, but if you asked me if I regretted my decision at all, the answer would be an irrevocable no. There is no way I would exchange now (and the excitement of what is to come) for anything from my previous life.

The Unedited Version....

A few people have expressed an interest in reading the unedited version of the piece "High Cost of High Life" which came out in My Paper last week, so here it is!

Life without a Blackberry

Do you miss anything from your previous life? seems to be the favourite question which people ask me since I left the corporate world about 2.5 years ago. The fast money, the exotic holidays, the nice apartment where we threw many lavish dinner parties? Or the turquoise corporate Amex card, the slight air of importance I felt whenever I shook hands with clients in glass-roofed buildings? How about the Blackberry handheld device which I had carried with me almost religiously (to the point that some days it even graced the loo), with the blinking red light indicating the arrival of an email and consequently, my immediate attention.

Sure, a part of me misses the high life. Some days, a little voice whispers to me that all the perks which I had left behind were what made life enjoyable, that without them I cannot have a good quality of life.

2.5 years later, however, I do honestly question what kind of quality that sort of life really offered. It seems impossible to erase from my memory the hundreds of late nights, of being “on call” at weekends and evenings, the inability to plan any social activities during the week, and missing many important celebrations. The image of me crying on the phone at 5am in the New York office with my then boyfriend who was cycling in Australia remains etched in my mind. I was constantly exhausted and high (on Coke Light) at the same time. I felt like I was incessantly catching up on sleep, or out partying to make up for my loss.

Recently I visited Singapore and saw some old school friends. Most of my school friends had been straight A students and had gone on to various high flying careers. One guy, who I had not seen for 13 years, commented that I was brave to have left my very well paid job in order to pursue an alternative career in the charity sector. He quickly added that he loved his luxuries too much, so he had no choice but to continue to work his ass off. Feeling slightly surprised by his candour, and not wanting to offend an old friend, I smiled and mumbled something non-consequential. Later that evening I did wonder though, were the luxuries what he was actually living for?

A few months back I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller who is a brilliantly thought-provoking writer. In his foreword, he described how nobody would want to watch a movie about a guy who worked very hard his whole life in order to buy a sports car in the end. None of us would be very inspired by such a plotline, but the sad fact is, so many of us do live spend our whole lives living a story just like that.

The transition has not been an easy ride – having to deal with head-on many deeply personal issues like my identity, insecurities and my attitudes towards money. However, even with all the struggles I have had to face in my new life, I’m not sure I really miss anything from the old one.
And I now read the red blinking light of a Blackberry as Beware, Danger – I am here to take over your life!

Christine Liu Lilwall grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore, and is married to adventurer and author Rob Lilwall. She worked in the City of London as a corporate lawyer until November 2007 and has since worked for several NGOs in international development and human rights. She has just finished volunteering on a project that works with former street children in Cebu, the Philippines, and regularly writes about her experience on her blog www.lifewithoutablackberry.com.

Happy Second Anniversary

Today marks the two year anniversary of my new life without a blackberry. Some friends commented back in 2007 that it was a brilliant phrase, but these days it may not appeal as much, as it’s rather rare for anyone to be without a blackberry – you don’t really have to work in the City to be “blessed” with such devices anymore.

It’s been quite a ride since I packed up my things and exited the shining revolving glass doors of Allen & Overy 2 years ago today. It began with my first ever “sabbatical”, a 4-month career break to learn to breathe again without feeling hyper tensed (which back then was not helped by that blinking red light on the blackberry), to gather up my much scattered thoughts and regain perspective on life and work. This all sounds so dramatic as I write this, but on hindsight I think that was exactly what happened. For the next many months as I went about researching on the charity sector and hunting for opportunities, going from a temp job in a development consultancy to a HR admin job to an HIV project coordinator role in Tearfund, I grappled with identity and self worth issues, which I suppose are common to many who dare to jump ship and try something altogether different work-wise. (I reckon many new mums probably face that too, given how little credit society seems to give to motherhood these days).

It wasn’t easy at all, trying to:

(1) give up the money and many luxuries in life including just walking into any restaurant without looking at the prices (something which I now think was probably not very wise),

(2) redefine my identity, from being one of 4000+ staff of a magic circle law firm – a term which, to my horror after I left, rings no bell whatsoever in many other circles, to err-I’m-still-wondering-what-I’m-going-to-do (and I had to drop in a line to say that I used to work in the City or I used to be a lawyer), and

(3) survive and thrive without the usual sense of security, though very soon after my exit the City (and the rest of the world) got into some serious trouble.

It was very hard work, and I found the redefinition of identity the most challenging of all, as the whole process brings up many deep seated personal issues which are so fundamental to me as a human being. It revealed my biases and the many coloured lenses through which I used to see the world and people generally. It showed me where I placed my hopes and dreams and confidence. It was a shocking, uncomfortable time, and in many ways I’m still going through that, but I think the rougher bits are over now (for this particular stage at least), and I’m happy to say that these days in most situations I don’t feel the need to mention to new acquaintances about me being a lawyer in my previous life, but that’s not to say that I don’t ever mention it!

The Scrabble proposal came, the wedding was underway within 4.5 months (not quite a record apparently, given my previous landlord got married to his lovely wife within 2 months of being engaged), I left Tearfund, we went on holiday to Canada to see my family, the wedding day arrived (which was beautiful and amazing), followed by the honeymoon in southern Spain, and within a week of our return to London, Rob had his official book launch which was a huge success (I felt like an important wife doing all the socialising :))

I continued on with my life without a blackberry by starting an internship with Equal Rights Trust, a small and relatively new NGO which focuses on equality and non discrimination around the world. It’s a brand new area for an ex corporate person (I want to see how I can use my legal background in development/social justice), and reading many of the cases and reports brings me back to law school days when I did care about the freedom of expression etc. For 3 days a week I work for these human rights lawyers, and one day a week I volunteer with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a Christian NGO that advocates for freedom of religion for all faiths, and puts pressure on governments to release prisoners of conscience. It’s been really humbling to work for these NGOs, as I’m reminded each day of the ridiculously huge range of freedoms and liberties I enjoy each day, most of which I completely take for granted. It’s also been uplifting to work for CSW, which, similar to Tearfund, derives much of their motivation and energy from God, who we believe is a God of the fatherless and the oppressed. Every Friday I work for my third boss, Rob, in his new venture with his book, TV series and speaking engagements. We’ve discovered it’s not an easy task working as husband and wife (especially with a wife who thinks very strongly that the City way of doing things is the only way), but we’re working on it with tears and laughter.

I continue to feel challenged (and sometimes depressed, which signals that I’m probably getting something wrong) by issues of poverty both globally and locally, in both my inability to figure out the solution (I KNOW, how can anyone just figure it out? I must be mad) and in my indifference and inconsistent lifestyle.

Thankfully, I’ve found help (and many challenging messages) in Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Resolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, Bryan McLaren’s Everything Must Change, Steve Chalke and Cherie Blair’s Stop the Traffik, Rob Bell’s Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and many more, but I would recommend these if you are grappling with these issues too. There are no easy answers unfortunately; but I suppose we must keep grappling and keep changing in small ways. I’ve recently been recommended Simplicity, Love and Justice which according to my friends provides practical tips on how you can live simply, do justice and impact your community so I'm looking forward to reading that.

Married life, I’m happy to report, is great, but not without its challenges. We went on The Marriage Preparation Course which was good fun, hilarious at times and very practical, and 3 months into the marriage now, sometimes we still wonder if we remember anything at all from the course?! Rob and I are probably what you would call “relationship nerds”: we went through quite a lot of marriage prep material like Loving Against the Odds by Rob Parsons, Fit to be Tied by Bill and Lynn Hybels and of course The Marriage Book by Nicky and Sila Lee who run the Marriage Prep Course as well - all extremely helpful stuff. Even so, at times we feel completely lost and not very equipped to deal with many issues that come up, especially when both of us think that we’re in the right! What Miles, the minister who married us, said about being the first to race to say sorry is very good to hear but very hard to apply indeed. A friend of ours once said to us before we got engaged that in his first year of marriage (they’re in their 7th year now) he felt that there was always a mirror that’s held up against his face, that he could see all the ugly selfishness which he was not aware of in the past. How true, especially when sometimes we do feel like strangling each other as we feel so frustrated!

One thing Rob and I have found really beneficial from all the books so far is the intentional carving out of an evening a week which is often called “Date Night”, where we set aside the time to “go out” as if we’re still in the dating stage, and where we make a real effort to talk to each other and understand how each other is feeling and thinking these days. We’ve also discovered that, true enough as we’ve been told, if you don’t put it in the diary it will never happen!

We’ll be away in the US for most of January, and will be leaving for Asia, where first we will be volunteering with the same street children project Christ for Asia in Cebu City for 3 months, and then back to Hong Kong in July. We’re not sure what we’re doing to do in HK yet, but praying and hoping the right doors will open at the opportune time! Our diaries are filling up quickly but we hope to be able to catch at least some of you in the UK before we leave, and we look forward to seeing those of you who are based in Asia very soon.

One year on...

Been ridiculously procrastinative (no such word) about updating this blog.

One year has flown past since I last wrote anything here. Spent 6 months doing an administrator's job in the international human resources team at Tearfund (which was good fun but felt it was time to move on) and then got an amazing opportunity to coordinate a US government funded HIV/AIDS project in Zambia and now, 6 months on, with my contract with the HIV/AIDS project just ended, my own wedding in 2 months, I'm relaxing in the most livable city on earth, yes, VANCOUVER, trying to catch my breath after such an intense year so far and doing some suntanning! Just realised there are very few commas in my sentences so far.

Been finding it incredibly challenging keeping up-to-date with the latest Facebook, Twitter, and what not technological stuff, and on top of all that complicated new ways of doing life I just discovered my dad has one of those i-somethings! Am not even sure what that's called again.

Rob and I are feeling very ancient at the moment :)

Hmmph.

The new plan (yes, another plan!) is to get married (Sept Sept Sept!) and go on a long honeymoon (but not as long as some people have it, like our friends Dan and Nicola, who went for 3 months!), and hopefully look for a job in October. But then Rob and I will be off very soon in January to the Philippines - yes where I worked with the street children organisation Christ for Asia before - for a few months at least and then we'll head to Hong Kong for a year in April.

Plans plans plans.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps - Proverbs 16:9

Lord please guide me!

New Beginnings (with video!)

In case you're wondering, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth yet!

I've just been lazy with updating this blog. Life's been busy on many fronts - still doing a lot of thinking (about old and new things!), re-adjusting to life in London (which now includes the wanderer-turned-writer boyfriend), finding my feet in development, moving to an absolutely lovely area called Canada Water... but there's still no excuse.

Cebu II and III are coming, I just don't quite know when! In the meantime please do watch the video I've made using some video clips and photos I took in Cebu (see further below). If you're interested in helping the street children charity, please let me know or go to their website www.christforasia.info.

A quick update on where I am on this blackberryless journey:

Since mid April I've been temping at an international development consultancy in Victoria, London. Funny how I used to think temping is a really strange concept, and probably only for people who "didn't make it", but now I think it's actually quite a good thing to do, especially if you're trying a few things out or you're building what Richard Nelson Bolles (and others I'm sure) calls a "portfolio career" (where basically you set out to collect the skills you think you will need for your ultimate career). Interesting how my perspectives change as I job hunt! The international development consultancy is a firm of consultants who advise government agencies and sometimes NGOs in their development programmes / policies / projects, and are a lovely bunch of people who are trying to make a difference in their own way! I was a bit taken aback at how relaxed and chilled out everyone is here (and they actually like what they do).

Rather miraculously, at the end of May, I managed to get an interview with my top favourite NGO of all times, Tearfund (www.tearfund.org), to get registered on their temporary register. I wasn't too sure how I could get into the organisation without having quite a lot of the technical specs that they normally ask for, so I thought why not try temping first? When I went for my interview there happened to be a job going in the International HR Team so I interviewed for that and in less than 3 hours they offered me the job!! I was probably a bit in shock for a week after that, but very excited and grateful to get a chance to see how Tearfund works from the inside and also get another bit of my foot through the door of development! I think HR is not exactly my thing (what is my thing??), but I'm interested in what they do (esp because the team deals a lot with the overseas based Relief and Development Team) and this will be a really good opportunity to learn and acquire more skills / know how in the field.

The only down side (and seriously it's the ONLY down side) is Tearfund is based in a place called Teddington which I had never heard of previously and according to Transport for London it's in Zone 6!

Gone will be the days when I wake up at 8am to go to work.

Yes I know I'm very spoiled...

Anyway, so this is a new exciting chapter for me, and as a friend was asking the other day, I'm still going to be blackberryless for a while :)

Here's the video.


Cebu 2008 from Christine Liu on Vimeo.

Trip to Scotland, blackberry-less

On previous holidays there was always the big conundrum of whether my blackberry should tag along or stay at home. I ought to bring it because (1) I could use it to call home or chat on gmail, (2) it has an amazing function of telling you exactly what time it is anywhere you travel to, and (3) I was expected to. There were defiant (and wise!) colleagues who would simply refuse to do that, because you really, and I mean really, don't want your well-deserved holiday ruined by a silly machine. But I was never that strong; I almost always brought the silly machine and ended up debating with myself everyday whether I should check it (and of course I always did).

This time I didn't have a choice. Actually, if I was honest, I was still suffering from blackberry withdrawal symptoms when Rob and I set off for Scotland in mid December. I would suddenly reach for my bag thinking it was still there, my fingers would itch for those tiny and uncomfortable keys (each key represent 2 letters in the model I used), and time and again I would complain to Rob: "If only I had my blackberry still, we can [check the film times/look up the restaurant on the map/find my friend's number on gmail]..." Rob would, without fail, reply in triumph: "Hooray! You don't have a blackberry anymore!"

Oh well.

So, without my usual toy, we set off for beautiful Scotland. We didn't manage to drive around the countryside in the end but rather we spent a long relaxing week in Edinburgh and a couple of days in Stirling staying with some lovely old friends of Rob's. In Edinburgh we did something unprecedented in my travel experience - we stayed 3 nights with a really nice Scotsman whom we had never met before through http://www.couchsurfing.com/! CouchSurfing is in essence an international network of travellers and people with a spare bed / couch / floor space, the latter usually being frequent travellers themselves who have benefited from other people's generous hospitality. It operates on the premise of reviews by couchsurfers who have stayed with the couchsurfing provider. At first I was intrigued but slightly apprehensive, and when we first met Fraser in his living room it really felt rather odd! However we warmed up rather quickly and chatted about everything from Central Asia to music records. Fraser was so sweet he even cooked us a fabulous dinner. It was interesting to steal a glimpse into the life of a complete stranger whom you would probably never meet otherwise, and it saved us quite a bit of cash! I would highly recommend the adventurous to try this sometime.

Travelling without the usual (relatively) big budget also meant that I had to be more flexible with my choice of restaurants/food. Instead of strolling into any random restaurant which I might fancy, I would now have to actually look at the menu first before deciding whether I should go in (I am aware of how bad this may sound to some, sorry!). In the past month I came to realise how I seemed to have had been living to eat as opposed to eating to live - one could tell from how my mood seemed to get quite severely affected by the occasional lack of tasty food! I had wanted to use the convenient excuse of being Chinese (as we love our food) but I think that has nothing to do with it. There's a nagging feeling at the back of my mind - I may be a lot more shallow than I would like to think. Of course there's nothing wrong with loving food, but when one's love for food demands that one always has good food whilst half the world is dying of hunger, that love seems more like lust (and frankly, downright self-indulgent) than a good and healthy desire?

It's quite scary sometimes what one may find whilst attempting self-discovery.

Life without a blackberry - a prologue

I thought it may be slightly cool to record what happens in my new life in the next few months now that I've quit my lawyer job - a life without timesheets, workload capacity emails, security tokens, endless passwords, logging in and out of phones and, best (or worst, some may feel) of all, my blackberry!

Of course it's also a life without the handsome salary, the perks, the I-work-in-the-City prestige, the free gym (not that I ever used it), the dream holidays, and the corporate speak I find myself missing a little! I also miss those crazy lovely people who work so hard, with whom I shared many late nights and weekends working on the same or different projects.

Before I left A&O many of those well-meaning crazy lovely people expressed their mixed feelings of envy, admiration and horror at my decision to jump ship. I'm still not entirely sure what kind of ship this is but no doubt it is a very different kind of ship from the old one.

Perhaps reality has yet to really sink in, but I am feeling rather liberated and excited about the future. Somehow the prospects of the future unknown (and the lack of incoming cash flow) seem slightly less menacing now that (I think) I've overcome the money hurdle in my head i.e. that I will not be having the kind of life that I was going to have in material terms if I had chosen to stay on in the legal field.

It is way too early to assess whether I will have any regrets choosing the life without a blackberry. I'm sure things will get tough at some point. My plan is to try and always remember two of the things that have helped me get here in the first place:

first, what Richard Nelson Bolles said in his book How to Find Your Mission in Life, that there is really another dimension to life than the materialistic, and

second, what Rob wrote in an e-mail to me when we first met which he often quotes in his school presentations - "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive..." - John Eldredge, Wild at Heart,

and hopefully I will press on!

PS Happy Christmas to all!
PPS for my A&O friends: I know I'm not following the A&O house style... it's okay... :)