Not long ago I met someone whom I thought portrayed the word “determination” in its truest meaning. His name is Kingston.
Kingston is from Seremban. His father was a construction worker and his mother a housewife. Growing up from a poor childhood, Kingston made it his ambition to get out of this poverty trap and the only way he thought he could do that was to make sure he got a good education. So when he was 18 or 19, he applied for the London School of Economics and he got accepted. Getting accepted though was only half the battle. The other half was getting the money to go there.
Kingston knew that his father wouldn’t be able to afford sending him there so all he asked for was a one-way air ticket to London. He would figure the rest out on his own. After some thought, his father borrowed some money to buy him an air ticket and pay for his first year tuition fees. Expenses for accommodation and food and everything else would have to be taken care of by Kingston himself when he was there.
So Kingston flew to London and started his tertiary education. During the day he would attend classes and when he was not studying or attending lectures, he would be working part-time jobs to earn money. He did everything from waitering in Chinese restaurants there to … well.. everything! Every penny went to paying his rent and buying him the most simple food that anyone could survive on. He told me that summer holidays were the best for him since there were no classes. He could then spend more time studying whatever they were going to teach in classes the next year.
When the summer holidays of first year neared its end, along came second year and its heavy tuition fees. Tuition fees each year was around GBP10,000 and Kingston knew there was no way he could ask his father for more money when the previous lenders back home were already constantly knocking on the father’s door. So he did some research and he went to see the Chancellor of the university with a proposal.
His proposal: That he knew average marks of its students mattered to the university for it to place well in the UK university rankings, so Kingston tried to make a deal with the university that if he scored an average of 95 marks for all his subjects in the second year, they would waive his tuition fees. The Chancellor said NO deal.
Kingston knew that he couldn’t just accept that. So every day for weeks, he went to sit outside the Chancellor’s office to ask him to please give him that chance. After many many weeks the Chancellor finally asked Kingston to come into his office and explain what was really going on. Kingston explained his side of the story and the Chancellor decided to waive his fees if he hit an average of 95.
Kingston spend the next academic year studying really hard while juggling with his part-time jobs to earn his living. At the end of second year, he had done it. An average of 95… so the university waived his fees. He then went back to them with the same deal for 3rd year’s tuition fees but this time they said they won’t be able to simply waive it. What they could do though was offer him a grant if he achieved the same result. He took it and kept up with his word.
Kingston graduated from LSE not just with 1st Class Honours but literally one of the top people in his year. After that he came back and found a job in banking in Singapore. Since then he has worked his way up to being a multi-millionaire and today he is based in Hong Kong as a Director at one of the top multinational investment banks in the world. He’s also happily married to a nice lady named Aileen. His marriage to her is a whole other story altogether…. but it ended up with them getting married in Las Vegas.
That’s right.. in Little White Chapel, where Britney got married. This is the video of it.
They had an Elvis impersonator to walk Eileen down the aisle. Today they also have a cute little boy that completed their happy family.
His name is Ryan and Aileen keeps a blog now for him. You can check it out here.
So that my friend, is just a bit of the amazing story behind Kingston.
Update: I just learned from Kingston that I got a part of the story wrong. The deal with the Chancellor wasn’t to get an average 95 but to get 4 distinctions. Big difference between the two but still quite something to achieve. Sorry for the mistake guys.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space