“He died of cancer within 2 weeks when we all found out he had cancer. It was too sudden. 2 weeks is a very short time.
He underwent chemotherapy but there was a lung infection and died from it. Its like he just disappeared.
I find that if you don’t treasure your loved ones, you will regret it one day. I miss everything about him until today.
It has been 15 years but he was a very loving person and took care of all of us very well.
He got our backs when we were growing up together with our tough situation.
When I was 15 years old, 4 years after my father died in an accident and we moved to a small house, my mother told me if I wanted pocket money, I should go out and work for it.
My mother said “if you want to study any course, you would need to handle it (financially) by yourself.”
And right before my late brother passed away, he spoke to my second eldest brother.
He said: “Use the insurance funds when I pass away for you (younger siblings) to further your studies”.
And if I could go back in time and tell him something – it would be, “I love you”.
Vincent: We both worked in Singapore as a web programmer before, then because of some reason, I had to go back to Malaysia to support my family and work as a computer tutor in a secondary school with a RM1500 salary, teaching very basic computer skills to students who never had a computer before. I also discovered there were many problems in the gift giving industry. I joined some online marketing and SEO classes, and despite it being many more times expensive (RM 6,000) than my salary, I went ahead, and realized knowledge is power, and got back more than I what I invested. With that knowledge, I built a simple website to promote personalized gift ideas and surprisingly the response was good.
And then I resigned from my computer tutor job and started my own small gift shop nearby our College. Unfortunately the gift shop did not last longer than about 6 months – we had to close down because of the wrong location. This failure taught me the importance of location and having a proper business plan.
Henry: For me, I worked abroad for 11 years in Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan. I started from being an IT consultant, to senior IT Consultant, into application support, into production support, then into being the Technical Architect where I managed more than 100 developers in building a multi-billion web based system. I was working in a tech company similar to MailChimp, and after that, in a gaming company.
But I very nearly could not have had this because last time in secondary school my academic result was not very good and got rejected by 3 universities. Then I applied for college, and the main campus also rejected my application. The main campus later on sent me to their branch campus, far away from main campus and 10 times smaller than the main campus.
I still remember trying to also ask for the politician of our area to help, because sometimes politicians have the power to write the letter to the school to accept my application. So I tried for the politician to write the letter but nothing helped.
I then had to accept the fact that I have to study 2 years there because of my bad academic results in secondary school. Even then, I tried very hard to gain acceptance into the main campus to have a better life. I tried, I failed – but I didn’t give up.
And all of this happened because, as both of us were sportsman and representing the school, the district, and the state in table tennis, athletics and taekwondo, I was not in school much and even when I was, because we were so tired, we would sleep in class or not go to school at all. That is why my academic result was really bad.
I still remember, people were saying “‘Henry is only good in sports, but not good in thinking, his studies are so bad”
So the people looked down at me – and that drove us to want to prove to other people that we can make it.
Just like how they underestimated us in sports too, table tennis,we wanted to prove to them wrong because someone said that, ‘you are not good player’, ‘you cannot represent school’. Those are negative words to put us down. Then we train very hard, we even play seven days a week together and ended up representing Selangor.
So in this journey we learn that as sportsmanship we never give up and never look down. If someone is saying negative things about you, you need to be positive and treat it as a motivation that you want to do better than them.
Actually there is the saying, when one door closes, another door opens.
So when I studied in the ‘kampung place’, (Karak) it’s a small city, there was no discos, no pubs, no entertainment, no night clubs. So I could focus on my studies.
For 2 years I studied very hard and I became the top student, I scored straight A’s in all IT subjects.
So if that time I had studied in KL maybe I could not have gotten the good result. Too many distractions, too many friends.
After that I did the degree, and was also considered as one of the top students and for my internship, I was paid highest amongst my classmates. The rest of my career, is history.
So I say, ‘bad results are not the end of the world, results are not everything, but your attitude is what will bring you a better life’.
So fast forward to when I was working in Taiwan, Vincent came to Taiwan and asked me to come back to Malaysia and work together on a business he started, Printcious Gifts, as an e-commerce website, with our online design tool for people to easily create memorable gifts online at affordable prices.
We needed a team and all 4 of us brothers joined together along with our mother to help grow it.
After few months of consideration then I decided to come back, together then we build the business, Printcious.
Because we were getting very good payment package in Taiwan.
So with these expertise we can build our Printcious business from scratch combining all of our skills.
Printcious needed Vincent’s internet marketing and SEO/SEM skills, and my technical skills to customize the website so that it can have special features for customers to create memorable gifts online.
The Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) that time was also looking for tech-based company to help develop, and with our e-commerce website, online design tool, and online marketing side, we definitely fit.
At that time, I remember the MaGIC Accelerator Program (MAP) had a syllabus of financial and marketing courses, products and business development side.
And I think among the 50+ startups, we had the highest attendance rates and attended all the classes – a far cry from our sportsman/secondary school days.
They also sponsored us to the Singapore Echelon and e@Stanford programmes at Silicon Valley where we visited Google, Facebook and met Venture capitalists. And through MaGIC, we got to know about other investment funds.
Vincent: Anyways looking back, keep on learning and don’t give up. I failed but I kept on trying and learning – and then from a small shop at my old college, today we have 4 companies (Printcious,DIYPrintingSupply.com, 123Cheese Photo Booth) and a web development plus internet marketing company.
From 2 people now we have 50 staffs and have won several awards.
As brothers, we still play table tennis and we both still do taekwondo. Henry has a Black Belt (3rd Dan) myself Black Belt (2nd Dan), and we still play or compete with each other.
I think it is inside our blood, to never give up, to prove to others that we are better than them. Just don’t give up, just keep on doing the best.”
“Their income per day was only four to five ringgit, and we have nine family members. That money was not enough to cover everybody in the family, so we struggled a lot.
I learned rubber tapping from my dad. Every school holidays or weekends, all of us had to help our parents collect rubber. We used to have to sacrificeour free time – instead of playing around with our friends, we had to go to the ladang. Sometimes early in the morning, as early as 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. It was very dark too, so we had to use special torches to see.
There was this one time, where me, my younger brother and my father went tapping. There was a pool of buffaloes nearby. Suddenly, a buffalo ran straight towards my younger brother. We all had to run like crazy from it! We survived and escaped, of course.
I didn’t really enjoy rubber tapping as a child, because of course I’d rather play around with friends. But it’s something we had to do to contribute to our family.
To learn rubber tapping is not simple. You need to learn about the tools, which needs to be sharpened and wrapped in a cloth, since it can be dangerous. When you start tapping, it can be very dark, so you have to use a special carbide torch. You have to cut the tree properly, otherwise the tree bark will be spoiled.
After cutting the trees, you have to wait for the rubber to stop, then put a chemical to make it hard, before you can sell it to the shop. It’s pretty smelly too, it can smell up to 3 or 4 days.
I didn’t get paid for helping my dad, because we knew that the money being earned by my parents was not enough. They just gave us some pocket money for school. We used to get 20 sen each, for us to makan at sekolah.
During my time, 20sen wasn’t enough, because normally the mee or nasi was 20 sen. So when I buy that, I have to go to the water pipe to drink. In the canteen, a plate of mee would be 20 sen. But outside, it would go up to one ringgit. We couldn’t afford that so we wouldn’t eat. Sometimes, my friends would offer their meals to us when they saw we weren’t eating.
I was a naughty boy during childhood. Sometimes, after school, we would go to the river to swim. One day, I threw a stone to my friend, and it hit him, so he reported it to my dad. My dad was angry at me and slapped me a couple of times. That’s one of the things that I can still remember, until now.
During those days, being a naughty boy, being lazy, you just stay in your own dilemmas and your own world. Things like that was a trigger point, telling me I needed to change – study hard and do something to be proud of. I wanted to be able to give something to my family.
I think my turning point was when I was in standard six and had to study very hard. Being from a poor family, to study hard is not easy, because you struggle with things like getting a reference book. Even to buy a book was not easy, and sometimes, I had to borrow books from my friends. They even got angry at me every now and again.
I was the first one in my family to go to university. I did computer science in Universiti Putra Malaysia and now, I am the founder of JomParking.
JomParking is a mobile app that allows users to pay for parking using a smartphone. It’s a platform that provides the solution for either local councils or parking operators. Right now, to pay for parking, you have to buy the book of coupons or go to the parking machine. Its very inconvenient, especially for those who aren’t from that area.
For example, I’m from Johor and coming to Sepang. To make a payment for the parking, I have to buy one book of coupons which is ten pieces, and I would only maybe use one or two.
The rest I have to keep in my car and it expires eventually, so it’s a lot of wastage, for both the consumers and the council. JomParking app also sends an alert fifteen minutes before the parking expires. You can add more time to extend the parking, making it convenient.
How an enforcement officer knows whether or not you’ve paid, since there’s no physical proof of payment like a ticket, is by scanning the vehicle plate number. The system will then tell the officer whether you’ve paid or not. For those who haven’t paid or expired, enforcement will issue a summon.
So far, the response has been very good, especially in KL. You know, in Malaysia it’s very hot, so its a hassle for you to go to the parking machine. This solution is helpful. We almost have 100,000 users already.
Jom Parking is my proudest achievement. I managed to create my own company and now we have 14 members. I joined a four month MaGIC program called GAP (Global Accelerator Program) last year. We learned a lot, like how to manage a proper company, starting from a pitch to potential investors to doing proper financing and business plans.
I think Malaysia has very good talent, that’s why more and more entrepreneurs go into start-ups. I believe we have a lot of talent, but we lack a lot of things like funding, direction and business strategy.
Sometimes, they are good at one part, like maybe technical, but they lack in other things. That’s why we need agencies like MaGIC that help these startups.
Looking back, if I could change anything from my childhood I would change my family status. If possible I would want to be from a rich family, where you can get whatever you want when you want it.
I remember in those days, during Hari Raya we wouldn’t always get new clothes, so we would have to wear last year’s clothes. If I could change that, I would at least have everyone in the family have new clothes.
I’m married and have kids now, and if this project fails, I would have to go back to my hometown as in the villages, the cost of living is much lower than living in KL and do something, like farming – or who knows, rubber tapping (laughs).
“My mother said “if you want to study any course, you would need to handle it (financially) by yourself.” There was a lot of pros and cons to this kind of upbringing.
The pros: she gave us freedom in doing anything we want. Meanwhile the cons: we have to do everything by ourselves.
I think that’s how people become more aggressive; you need money to survive. You need to be aggressive to get what you want.
Growing up in high school, I was busy working part time as a promoter, a gift sampling employee to selling minyak kilat – I did any job that can give me money.
By being aggressive, you get what you work for. If you are hardworking enough, you will get at least something in return. The secret to getting where I am today would be to ‘put in effort’.
My mother’s ways taught me to be accountable in everything that you do – for your own life.
If you want to have a bright future or a better life, then do it yourself.
That’s the biggest lesson for me. I never resent my mother for bringing me up that way. I am thankful.
Growing up, I have seen people who have such protective parents that the individuals are afraid in making a decision. Afraid of failure. Or those who talk about how big their idea is but never execute it.
When my father passed away and the situation was as such, I was scared of the future. I felt insecure. To be honest, I am still insecure today. However, my childhood has taught me to work even harder to this very day.
We grew up in Ampang in one of the low cost flats there and my late father was a businessman, a contractor who renovated a hospital, until he lost a lot of money due to guarantor disputes.
When he passed away, my mother was a housewife and had to find work, earning RM400 a month.
I went on to study part time, got a PTPTN loan and immediately started working as a Salesperson – a Personal Banker. I was really aggressive and it resulted me in getting the Rookie Award within 2 months.
My good performance got me headhunted to work at a bank in Singapore, and when I first got my salary in Singapore, I sent back almost all the money to Malaysia. I left a very small portion for myself.
Sometimes I feel what I have accumulated wasn’t good enough. Maybe it is a weakness of mine because I always thought it wasn’t good enough, and that I need to work harder because I can do better.
I regret staying in corporate for too long, because after that, I started an events company with the tagline: ‘Beautify your happiness”, and later on, started ChubbeeCloud, when I realized people were always looking for a unique gift to give to their guests.
I realized the gifting industry in Malaysia was very boring, giving gifts like flowers, printed shirts, and mugs – and I thought, ‘why don’t we do something creative?’
Something that can be personalized, takes thought to create – and can be eaten too.
So marshmallows it was. We make customisable, printed marshmallows using edible ink – customized boxes for everything from corporate gifts, to little birthday treats and even proposals.
And we hope to create a culture of thoughtful gifts amongst Malaysians.
Once we got the idea, we executed. No point to talk and think some more.
During that time I joined Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre Global Accelerator Programme (GAP) whose experienced mentors helped me to look at the bigger picture, how to add value to my business, how to engage with your audience and in digital marketing and shared different business strategies.
I always believe that everyone of us needs to create more income. You can’t depend on just one income. My advice to other entrepreneurs out there: execution, execution, execution.
And looking back, the biggest gift that I had ever received was from my late brother who passed away when I was 19 years old.
He died of cancer within 2 weeks when we all found out he had cancer. It was too sudden. 2 weeks is a very short time. He underwent chemotherapy but there was a lung infection and died from it. Its like he just disappeared.
I find that if you don’t treasure your loved ones, you will regret it one day. I miss everything about him until today.
It has been 15 years but he was a very loving person and took care of all of us very well.
He got our backs when we were growing up together with our tough situation.
Right before he passed away, my brother spoke to my second eldest brother. He said: “use the insurance funds for us younger siblings to further our studies”.
And if I could go back in time and tell him something – it would be “I love you”.
Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems!#HumansofMaGIC
“For something that is more hard and stones such as engineering, it is either a 1 or a 0. It is definite. That’s why I find advertising far more challenging.
I’m also quite the perfectionist. I strive to please the maximum amount of people I can, that’s why it is easier to find joy in advertising.
Throughout my career, I have met a lot of people. Especially in my position – I interview many people, including fresh graduates. I think graduates should have the right to know what they are signing up for, but I’m sure no one told them. That was my observation.
For mid level or senior management who want to step up their career, there’s no one actively guiding them, telling them what they should be doing. A lot of it comes from pure assumptions, or they see someone else doing it and they jump into it. They think, ‘Oh it looks like a nice job and I want to apply for it!’, without the knowledge that I need to have so and so skills.
I find that there is a mismatch in terms of what they can offer versus what their end goal is. That mismatch is a huge gap creating a big problem in my industry. People have big aspirations and goals but they do not know how to get there. They want to fill big shoes.
That’s why I signed up to mentor someone interested in the industry. I want to tell them the harsh reality that they have to do this first. Otherwise, I would be wasting a lot of my time interviewing people, telling them they are not there yet.
When I speak to my friends, a lot of them face the same problems – there’s not enough talent out there or all these talents just need someone to guide them. Especially when someone graduates, there is no teacher anymore. Who is there to tell them, you need to do A-B-C-D-E in order to achieve F?
The most common I meet are the ones that want the highest position, with the highest monetary reward, but with the lowest possible involvement. Some want to be CEO or start a startup, but zero idea on how to do it.
They see the end goal, but not the struggle. Its painful when you speak to them.
A lot of people I speak to, they say, let them go and try, let them fall so that they learn, but why?
Why do you want to make people suffer? Why don’t guide them to tell them the next step?
Instead, we should give them positive guidance. Most importantly, tell them the reality to achieve something, rather than letting them try and fail.”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is working with FutureLabto feature their team of inspiring mentors. Follow us to get to know more on their mentors. To learn more about FutureLab’s online mentoring platform or to connect with Jenifer, please visit futurelab.my.
Jenifer Alicia Ooi is a director of a renowned advertising agency based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Photostory by Christine Cheah Edited by Mushamir Mustafa and Amalina Davis
“Users can book a hairstylist, masseuse or manicurist, anytime, anywhere. We are always looking to create value for our customers, by offering off-peak deals and points collection for item redemptions.
Convenience is what we look for, but at the end of the day, Asians are Asians, we always look for what’s valuable for money. If we go online, we expect to find cheaper and better deals from existing salons.
And I had no idea about grooming, I only knew how to groom myself, but not others.
I wasn’t connected to anyone in the industry except for my co-founder (who was founder of A Cut Above).
I was mostly interested in the tech side.The first 6 months we had no clue how to build a prototype, a website, and my other cofounder used to think MVP (minimum viable product) stands for most valuable player.
What really struck me was this makeup artist who I came to know about. She was from Teluk Intan, and she was being abused by the employer, physically and financially.
For her makeup, she would only make RM15 from charging RM120. She said she wanted a profile but she didn’t know how to go about it.
We listed her in WeStyleAsia, she grew her business, participated in our events, and now she’s a personal makeup artist to the likes of Fazura and Ning Baizura.
I’m really happy to see where she is now. This is the change we are making to ordinary Joes and Janes on the street.
In my entrepreneurship journey, Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre has helped me understand how to run a business on technology, from validation all the way to human psychology. The pinnacle of my startup education was when I went to Silicon Valley under MaGIC’s programme.
Being in San Francisco and meeting all the top guns, that was simply brilliant. MaGIC was the true backbone of where WeStyleAsia is today.
The trick is not to be a unicorn – it’s to be a uniroach. A cockroach that can survive anything that later on becomes a unicorn.
When I’m in my down period and having self doubt, I always remember why I first started.
It was simply to empower people to look great and stay confident. I came from the entertainment industry where people are superficial – there’s a lot of beautiful people out there, but because they can’t exude the confidence out to people, they are disregarded.
And with fashion, people judge you the way you dress, the way you talk. So I wanted Westyleasia to be a portal, that when you go to the portal, you become a much more confident person. To educate people to look good, to take care of yourself.
And constantly reminding yourself that looking good isn’t about vanity – it’s about respecting people”.
“I was the ‘pelajar cemerlang’ at 12, completed my Grade 8 piano and violin at 15, and was the youngest conductor of the orchestra at 16. I dare say I had a deprived childhood and was angry at her for a long time.
My mom was the runner up for Miss Universe Malaysia in 1977. She’s half German, but when it comes to money, she’s very Asian. She saw a talent in me and set a high benchmark. Since I responded well, she thought I enjoyed it and was even more gungho towards me.
I grew up around the entertainment industry. There was this audition for babies where the first one who crosses the Finishing Line would get the main role, as simple as that.
For two weeks my mom would train me 2 hours daily. On the audition day, there were 50 babies. When all babies were crying and zigzagging, I crawled straight to victory.
So that’s how I scored my first job, and it paid me a couple of thousand dollars.
At the age of 4, my mom would just leave me to hang out with the TV producers and cameraman, while she did her own stuff. That trained me to be really independent.
After a while, I wasn’t sure if being in entertainment was satisfying my needs or satisfying her needs – because she used to boast to her friends when I appeared on news and TV commercials.
The reality only started to hit when I was a teenager. I felt like I didn’t have the freedom, and music especially felt like a chore. It was all about serious stuff and I lost the enjoyment. At 14, I became rebellious.
It became darker after I finished high school. I felt like all of this is finally done, and its time for me to really have my own life. At that time, when my parents told me to do anything or challenged me, I would just walk out from the house and won’t come back for a week.
Of course, now that I’ve grown up, I realized all parents just want the best for their kids.
The turning point for me was when I went to a leadership course, and they asked a question, ‘‘In the event that you leave this world earlier than your parents, what would you want your parents to say to you at your funeral?’
That question triggered me. I realized that I will miss my parents, especially my mom, a lot.
In my 20s, when I was working hard, I used to shut down my mom’s call. I was easily agitated by her. Moms are just being moms, they want to just make conversation.
My moms a storyteller, so she just loved telling stories. She would make every call sound so urgent, at that time there’s no Whatsapp, so everytime she would call me, even at the office.
So when I read that question, if my parents were gone from my life, I would actually miss all these calls and random stories that she used to share.
Even though I never got to express how I love them through words, most of it was through my actions.
When I look back at the past, from primary school, to high school, I always took the road less traveled.
My parents have always given me an unspoken kind of support. They don’t put pressure on me to give them allowance on a monthly basis, which I still feel very horrible for.
When I was bootstrapping on my own, I didn’t even pay myself a salary for 14 months.
Deep down inside, I know that whatever they put me through has really moulded me into who I am today. And I cannot thank them enough for that”.
(Part 1/2, stay tuned for the second part of the story!)
– Humans of Kuala Lumpur went with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA Malaysia) into the jungles of Sarawak, where they were helping out underprivileged Sarawakians and orang asal in their mission to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
‘I want to be a policeman! A policeman in Peninsular Malaysia’.
“Why do you want to be a policeman?”
‘So I can catch the bad guys!’
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– Humans of Kuala Lumpur went with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA Malaysia) into the jungles of Sarawak, where they were helping out underprivileged Sarawakians and orang asal in their mission to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
“I’ve been living here for 30 years. Before that I was in Brunei and was born in Sibu. I worked as a labourer – lifting cement and bricks.
There’s a lot of health problems here. Many do not understand what diseases that they have. Mostly because they are far from the city.
Maybe in the city a lot of young people have sex before marriage. Here, if you like someone, you would marry first before initiating anything else. Some things in life don’t change”.
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– Humans of Kuala Lumpur went with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA Malaysia) into the jungles of Sarawak, where they were helping out underprivileged Sarawakians and orang asal in their mission to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
