I had coffee with an old friend today. I knew him since the good ole days when he was GM at unisys and I was GM at the university of malaya cooperative. His last job was group MD of a 2nd board public-listed company. Our chat moved from official potential business with his new outfit to current politics and jet-skiing. Talking of which, I have not gone back to PD to jet-ski for quite sometime now. He then told me of his life and death experience he had recently. His 2 kids (boy and girl) went jet skiing. They stayed at Tanjung Tuan Resort (5th mile PD) and at about 7 pm on 2 separate jet skis, both his kids went out of sight. It was dark. They were gone. He had to arrange a search party to lookout for them. Apparently the currents brought the kids and their jet skis out into the sea, the jet skis then ran out of petrol. In the darkness, they (his 2 kids) saw big ships pass by, waved for help but to no avail. They decided to swim back to shore. 3 hours later they reached Teluk Kemang which was on the 8th mile of the PD beach stretch. Luckily, both his boy and girl (the girl was older) were excellent swimmers. They swam, sister in front, brother trailing behind in the dark, towards the beach. They arrived 3 hours later, having been bitten by all sorts of fish and jellyfish and arrived in just their underpants. When my friend realised that his kids were missing at sea, and tried to arrange for a search party...nobody cared, it took along time to get help....hah..soo much for malaysian hospitality! If you dialled 911 in the States...the response time would be much much swifter. That's the difference when one talks about a first world country and a third world country! His daughter is back from the UK and writes for The Star and she works for someone I know in Jakarta. Her younger brother, is doing his PhD, all paid by his university (Milwaukee) in the US.
We discussed among other things, the need for money for children's education. One needs at least RM1mil now to put your kid in medical school. We also talked about what life would be like living in New Zealand ( referring to another common fren who had migrated to NZ hehe). He still believes that London...being much more cosmopolitan, would be a much more happening place to live....which, I could not disagree hehe. Well, he has enough money for all that and tells me having more money is no longer an option. But I told him, when you retire, how much really can you eat? I don't think you can even finish a plate of nasi goreng kampong (village fired rice)....hahaha.
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