Salam Aidil Fitri.

Assalammulaikom, saya serta keluarga ingin mengucapkan Selamat Menyambut Aidil Fitri dan menyusun sepuluh jari memohon ampun dan maaf atas segala salah dan silap yang dilakukan. Semoga silatulrahim yang sedia terjalin berpanjangan. Hari Raya brings back memory of the past years. In the 50s the eve of Hari Raya was special especially for the young. What with the merecun, the meriam buluh in between helping our parents to bakar lemang and kacau dodol. Even when the nation was fighting the Communist Terrorists during the Emergencies, we felt safe. The houses, ours was in Ipoh, had no fence and no gate and the mat rempit and the snatch thieves were not born yet. There was no TV, no hand-phone and no Internet. We never felt lacking. We were happy creating our own games and making our own toys. The cinemas then had a third class and it costs only tiga kupang. Although we had to sit on the long wooden bench, when the movie begins its the same as sitting in the first class. The only down-side was we sometimes had stiff necks, especially if it was a long movie, as the benches were too close to the screen. You still can get cheap better class seats, if you go to the morning cheap-matinees during Saturdays and Sundays. If you want free entry make sure you have a friend whose dad is a cinema manager. January 11, 1964 was a very important date for me. On that day my dear dad passed away. I had just turned 23. As the only boy in the family I was entrusted with the responsibility of looking after the family, 5 adults and 6 children. Life was hard. My beloved mum followed my dad 21 months later. After my mum passed away I moved to Kuala Lumpur, to begin a new life. I had a job as Project Manager, to organize and manage a Batik factory, a MARA venture, located at Jalan 222/223 Petaling Jaya. Looking back, it was an ill-conceived idea. Ideally a Batik producing business would be a low-cost family run cottage industry, located in the East Coast where experienced labour is cheap and easily available. In the city they have to

be imported, paid significantly higher wages and provided with housing. In spite of that the business survived. I left Batik Malaysia when I accepted a chance to attend an executive program at the Harvard University School of Business in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was the youngest person to be inducted into the Rotary Club Of Petaling Jaya. In the following year I was elected as the Director of International Services. It was then that I met John Llyod Third, the Director of International Services of the Roatary Club Of Kuala Lumpur. He was the U.S. Deputy Ambassador stationed in Kuala Lumpur. It was he who secured me a place at Harvard and a scholarship as well. As the Embassy was running short of scholarships for short-courses, I was given one for ballet complete with money to acquire ballet shoes and attires. It was of course a big joke to my can group. When I returned from the U.S, I was without a job for close to three months. It was a frightening experience, as I had a wife and a one-a-half year daughter to support, a house rental to pay and a car loan to service. On the 80 th day I had only RM 25.30 in my bank balance. This predicament came to the knowledge of a fellow Rotarian, John Henderson, the Managing Director of George Kent. He came to my rescue. I was offered a job as the Manager for Business Development. The Company was in the industrial instrumentation business, better known for its water meters, instrumentations for water treatments, oil refineries and processing plants and had a factory and a workshop at Batu Tiga, Shah Alam. I was to be responsible for getting into other businesses that will further utilize the then existing expertise and manufacturing facilities. This was a very challenging job. Having no engineering background did not help. To survive in the company I had to develop a new business line fast. At Harvard I was told to look for problems as it provides opportunity. I soon learned from my golfing net work that a palm oil company was looking for some form of heating to constantly keep the crude palm oil at an optimum temperature so that it could be easily pumped for handling purposes. The successful market-opening for the use of the heat-exchangers helped me

to keep my job with the company. Subsequently we developed other businesses for example, medical and science research instruments, notes and coin-counting machines, strong-room doors, safe-deposit boxes, industrial incinerators and commercial kitchen equipments. To be well-versed with product knowledge I had a very dedicated teacher, in the person of Chan Kok Soo, the Sales Director, whom I kept in constant touch until his demise last year. John Henderson now lives in Cambridge, UK. A few years ago my wife and I visited him and we found him in good health. To be continued.. insyaallah. Raja Abdul Aziz. 9 September 2010