Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
I was a 19-year-old boy who had just settled in Melbourne, Australia for university having never lived away from home.
I arrived at the end of July, classes started in the middle of winter and I was slowly starting to find my rhythm for the lifestyle I had hoped to familiarize myself with.
What most weekdays were like
The routine was simple: wake up in the morning and get past whatever school related responsibilities I had to, like classes and meetings, grab a meal in between, and then either hang out with friends or head back to my room to spend time with myself and get work done.
If I was by myself in my room, it would mostly be cooking, sometimes having food delivered, or in this case, heading out for takeaways.
It happened when I went out to get dinner one night
The sun goes down pretty early in the winter, which meant that street lights lit up around 4pm and it’s pitch dark skies by 5.
That night I headed out to a kebab stand that was not 500m from where I lived.
Unlike back home, the houses in Australia don’t have a culture of leaving their porch lights on when it got dark or throughout the night, all there was were dimly lit street lights every 10 steps of the way.
You can imagine the sketchiness walking through a residential area all by myself just wanting some kebabs for dinner.
I was then approached by a large Caucasian man dressed fully in black on my walk to dinner.
“Hey where ya going?”
To which I replied, “Nowhere man just getting some dinner”
He had this huge stench of what smelled like alcohol and musk oozing off him.
“Give me your wallet”
My initial reaction to this was thinking “He’s kidding, right?”
I froze and said “Sorry?”, assuming I misheard him.
He then pulled out a machete looking weapon
He directed it towards my direction and repeated his demand. By now I realized this man was doing anything else but kidding.
I took my wallet out and opened it, grabbed all the cash I had in there (about 200 AUD) and chucked it on the ground, then I showed him my empty wallet.
But he wasn’t satisfied with it just yet and proceeded to ask for my debit card as well, to which I obviously complied.
He picked up the goods with one hand and the weapon on the other, grinning at me and giving me the classic “Thanks mate” before taking off.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like having a kebab anymore.
I went back to my room immediately distressed. I sat there for a while not having any idea on what my next step was, but I knew that there was no way I was going to tell my parents.
My main thoughts at the time were not “Damn, I just got mugged”, but instead “What does he need my card for? It’s not like he knows the PIN number?”, that then reminded me to get my card blocked.
But before I could do that, I noticed that my bank account had already made 8 transactions of ~$90 at a local electronics store. It turned out he didn’t need the PIN number for any purchases below $100, all it took was a tap of the card.
I lost all my money and broke down
A friend’s mother was kind enough to help me with the necessary steps of filing a police report and making a trip to the bank to issue a new debit card, as she was the only person I could think of at the time.
Then came another problem that not even a friend’s parent could assist, I was broke.
With rent coming up in the next couple weeks or so, I had only enough money for my expenses like food and bus rides to campus.
I’ve never felt so helpless. I was fresh in a foreign country with no physical presence of any family near me, not knowing how any systems worked and the worst thing that could’ve happened to me, happened.
I resorted to my sister, who was studying on the other side of the country, I broke the news while crying to her on my laptop.
She insisted on lending me money to help me get rent sorted out which was very surprising to me, because having any intention of borrowing money was the last thing on my mind when I called her.
After obliging her offer, my next goal quickly became paying my sister back as soon as I could, so I did what anyone who needed money would do, I decided to work.
I took up two waiting jobs while juggling university in between
I got desperate in paying my sister back because I knew the guilt would pile up on me if I didn’t do my best to.
I had 2 to 3 days of 6 hour shifts for each job during the week, so more than half of my week became dedicated to work, while cramming in schoolwork during any free time I had.
My routine then transitioned to waking up in the morning and getting done with classes as early as possible, leaving almost immediately after and catching 30-minute bus rides to my workplace, one further than the other.
Some days I would get back to my room close to midnight, but the bright side was that I didn’t have to worry about food as the restaurants I worked at provided meals to their staff.
I couldn’t bring myself to revisit the experience for a while
The incident definitely stuck with me for about a year, I never really told anyone else apart from my sister and that friend who helped me. I even withheld from telling my parents when I eventually returned home, because I didn’t want them to think I couldn’t manage my own misfortune.
It was difficult to talk about it for a while because I hated to revisit the time where I felt the most helpless.
But over time, I learned that even though what happened to me wasn’t great, I was glad it did to put me in a place to have had first-hand experience of a tragedy that couldn’t have been avoided.
I eventually paid my sister back in 2 months
Looking back at it, I didn’t regret occupying that semester of university life with the struggle of balancing class workload and my jobs. It gave me a bigger role of responsibility to uphold, and I would like to think it will contribute to my personal development.
But above all that, I was very fortunate to receive all the help I did at the time and can’t imagine what I would do without it.
Now I’m just glad I didn’t get hurt.
For more stories like this, read: Beware: I Was Scammed Out Of RM 1,100 When Someone Pretended To Be My Boss and My Dad Confessed He Had A Side Chick Who ‘Bomoh’d’ Him Out Of RM700,000
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