When Mike Selvadurai came to Wellington at the age of 18 he wondered where all the people were, and at his first New Zealand meal he was wondering where were the curries and the sauces.
Born in Malaysia of Sri Lankan parents Mike choose to leave after the 1969 race riots in that country, and picked New Zealand as the place to continue his education. Initially he stayed with a host family who picked him up at the airport on a Sunday in 1970.
“Driving to their home I was wondering where all the people were. Everything was shut. You could count the number of people on the street.
“My first meal was a chop with peas and mashed potato. Where were all the curries and the sauces I wondered?”
His diet has changed a lot since 1970 and he notes that the spices, vegetables and ingredients for curries and other Asian dishes are now much more freely available.
He went to Wellington High School, and noted at the time the lack of competitiveness among students compared with the highly competitive Malaysian school system.
“On the first day we all had to introduce ourselves and there were about six Chinese students who gave their Chinese names. The teacher said I won’t remember all that, and chose new first names for them, like John, and David and so on. You couldn’t get away with that now.”
Mike went on to study at Victoria University graduating with a BCA and in 1976 he joined Dunlop as a management accountant where he spent four “interesting years.’
In 1980 he moved to Todd Energy where he stayed until his retirement in 2011, rising to become part of the senior management team as commercial manager and then company secretary.
He’s proud to have contributed to the “unique commercial success story of Todd Energy which grew from a company worth $100 million in 1980 to $3.5 billion in 2011.”
Mike is married and has three sons: one is studying genetics in Toronto; another is an industrial designer and cocktail mixologist who runs a bar in Melbourne; the third is in London working as a dancer and personal trainer. He and his wife travel frequently to see the family and explore the world.
Nowadays he spends time at Angel HQ “an investment network of like-minded people” helping start-up businesses, and since 2012 he has been involved in a project in Cambodia which funds students from poor villages through tertiary education.
He gave as his personal philosophy “to live life meaningfully with honesty and integrity, without regrets, and as long as the mind and body allows me to do so.”
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