On 20th July 2008, I went to officiate the opening of the Asia Pacific Entrepreneur Execellence Award Presentation which was organised by a few local Chinese business magazines. More than 500 companies participated in the competition but only about 40 were chosen as recipients of the reward.
I have been attending the presentations organised by the “Shang Tian Xia” magazine in past two years. This magazine is the anchor organiser of such events. I was invited as special guest mainly because I knew the editors, the Tan brothers, and one of them, Albert Tan has been my former USM junior. Albert Tan has been a debator in the same team with me and we have won the best debate team organised by Kwang Hua Daily in Penang when I was a second year student.
I met Albert again in the 2004 general elections. He came for many of my public rallies and listened to our speeches as a spectator. When I spotted him, I strongly encouraged him to be speaker on stage, but he dared not do so as he and his brothers have close relationship with MCA in Johor.
This is Albert Tan, the organiser of the award presentation and a great debater during campus days.
In this award presentation, he invited me to give a speech and present awards to all companies that won the award. Each time when I was invited to give a speech, my PA will ask the organiser to prepare text for me. I think my PA did made the same request to Albert Tan this time and he has faxed in some pages into my office. I did not know what he has faxed to me until that day when I was about to go to the event, when I read the pages he sent to me, then only I realised that he did not fax me a prepared text but he faxed me his company’s press statement on this award presentation event.
I got a shock to see that, I then quickly went to the hotel to meet with Albert to check facts with him on the event. When I was at the VIP waiting room, I grumbled that he did not prepare speech for me, he told me that he dare not do so as I can write and speak better than him, he doesn’t know what I want to say in my speech, and he even asked me to make bi-lingual speech, which made me more shocked!!
I then decided to talk about the award presentation briefly, but I talked about economy of the country. I said many people think that we are entering into recession, but bad time/crisis moment could also be opportune time for many businesses. There are many successful businesses started their investments and business venture when the economy was bad. I also discarded the accusation that it is politics that made the economy worse, I said there is up and down in the economy, and it has been 10 years since last economy down turn in Malaysia when the government pegged Ringgit with USD. So, to have economy down turn now is very natural cos this is the economy cycle.
When I walked down from stage after speaking, Albert Tan said that he was impressed I can make impromptu speech in both languages. I said he forced me to do so…..
Hoo!! Thank God that I did not fumble in my speech and make blunder :-p
The organiser gave me a souvenir, i.e. a big poster with my 2004 election poster pix on it 🙂
A award winner gave me a basket which contains herbal wine and liquour, his company’s product.
Guess who she is? This is Jessie Chong. She saw me when I was on my way back. She thanked me for supporting her decision to change sex in a TV talk show programme. She looks sweet as a real person. She then gave me her album and her book.
Teresa,
Yes, I subscribe to your view that there is opportunity in an economic downturn. I read in the newspaper some years back that Tan Sri William Cheng made a very wise decision when he threw all his money into his Steel Mill in Selangor at a time when the demand for steel was sluggish. Today the Tan Sri is among the 20 richest man in the country.
In case you are not aware of, the mandarin for crisis is ‘weiji’ which means danger and opportunity.
yep Jessie is hot