A Rather Inspiring Story

I got this from the net. Worth the 5 mins reading.

my parents got divorced when i was 17, just a few days shy of my SPM exams. before that, my family was quite well off since my dad works in one of the GLC and was getting quite a lot per month. when my dad left, my mom had to work as dad left us with nothing at all and no monthly allowance.

my mom only finished standard 6 of school, broke, and heartbroken.

none of my rich uncles (my dad side, one datuk, one tan sri) wanted to help. my mom looked like a beggar.

and the govt didn't help at all. until today, my mom's name is nowhere to be seen on the "ibu tunggal" list. call it weird, call it overlooked case. but everytime i went to Baitulmal to get some help for my mom, i was shunned away.

ok. before my parents got divorced, my mom bought herself a van. it's easier for us (kinda big family) to travel in it. so what my mom did? she started to drive kids to school (without permit, coz it'll cost a bomb to apply for a school bus permit)

first 6 months was hell to us. i remember waking up on raya morning only to find there's no food in the house and my mom was crying quietly in her room. that was one of the saddest day of my life. being the eldest child, i feel that i have a mountain to climb to save my family.

i sacrificed my studies. i never got the chance to finish college. i went to work here and there. sometimes double shifts just to support my family.

sometime later my mom's business got better. she got herself the permit she always wanted (took her 4 years to get it), bought a proper bus.

on the other hand, knowing that i will never have the chance to learn properly in college, i started to learn from tutorials on the net. this was during 1998, when the net was at it's infancy in malaysia. i learned everything from photoshop, to java, to video editing, etc. i saved some money (waiter during the day, burger stall during nite) to build myself the best rig that time (AMDK6-2 350Mhz, 256mb RAM, 20GB HDD) and use it to learn. after i've completed some freelance projects, my confidence grew and made me try to apply for work.

finding work without a cert is VERY HARD in malaysia. no matter how good you are, if you dun have the paper, nobody would want to even read your resume.

i found a job after about 8 months of hunting.

fast forward to now, i own an advertising company with client accounts ranging from SMEs to big boutiques. and soon i will expand to singapore (hopefully by year's end, God's willing). my mom got 3 school bus with more than 300 kids as her passengers. my sister finished university with Bsc (Hons) in Business Admin, my third bro just finished level 4 of his SKM with job offers from workshop here and there waiting for him and my youngest bro is about to take his SPM, with options to go ICOM or ASK to further his interest in music later.

my story shows that malays do not need help or being spoonfed. all we need is determination and willpower to do it. and let no one say no to our dreams.

my journey is still long. i'm just glad my family pulled thru our darkest period together. that made us closer and made me realise that how valuable my family is.

i know most part of the story will be hard for another malay family/person to live thru. but that's the harsh reality of life. and it made me realised that all this stupid NEP, ketuanan melayu BS is just benefiting the high society of malays, not ppl like my family.

i have plans to make my mom's journey into a documentary. i hope to sell the documentary to either discovery channel or natgeo. i want the world to know that my mom is a superwoman. and she did it all my herself. i'm proud of her..