Saturday, July 10, 2010

Why some Malaysians don't fail.

It occurred to me that Malaysian folk are quite the adrenaline chasers. Seriously, we're an adventurous lot. We’ve sent a team up Mt. Everest, we had a Malaysian sail solo around the world, and we even sent a dude up into space.

And while I’m sure some would disagree, I refuse to say that we have our very own astronaut. C'mon, you send one guy up into space to play 'batu seremban' and then call him an astronaut? If I flew to Paris and played five stones on the flight, you wouldn't call me a pilot would you?

But then again, let's give credit where credit is due; the dude had a freaking awesome experience. And the dude reiterates the point I'm trying to make, that Malaysians have some pretty gargantuan balls when it comes to throwing ourselves into the unknown. And that's not the least of them. There's a whole lot of other shit that we've done, and they're all listed here.

The newest example though, is this guy.

This spectacular dude, Syed Ahmad Abdul Hadi bin Syed Hussien, is a humanitarian worker. And I’m not talking about the weekend charity workers who do it for the 15 minutes of fame; this dude did it for his tertiary studies, and was actually in a hostage situation before. To put it in simple terms; he braves angry people with guns to bring aid to hungry and suffering.

His newest adventure is that he’s in the middle of travelling from Kuala Lumpur to London, on this:



He’s doing this to promote One Malaysia, and while I think that the concept is still problematic, I’m going to let it go and say that out of all the ways to express One Malaysia, his is probably the most bad ass.

And get this; because no one would sponsor his ride (you cheapskate fuckers) this guy spent his entire life savings for this trip. Oh yes, while the rest of us might spend it on placing a down payment for real estate and buy ourselves a box to lock ourselves in for the rest of our lives, this dude spent a whopping RM40, 000 (about 13,000 USD) on freedom. Now that's a great way to spend money.

We should have his face on plastered on nasi lemak wrappers.

So did this Malaysian fail? Absolutely not. I count this as a win.

Win rating: 8/10