November 2023: It's been seven years. I owe a story. I owe to so many who asked. My only excuse is that the stories keep getting better (or worse, depending on which genre you fancy). So, do bear with me. I know you have heard much of the 'hissing and hushing brought by air,' and you want to see for yourselves for your purpose, and here I am with the stories from the source of air. Let's just say, if you know, you will understand why things happened the way they did. It isn't rocket science to know how to become Top 600.
My oh my ... how time flies!
22nd December 2022 marks 6 years of my colorful 2nd tour-of-duty service in UPM. The first round was between 1997 to 2008 - equally colorful 11 years of a career life in Malaysia. The difference between then and now? Now it's in '4K' while back then, things were still in RGB. The color this time is more pronounced!
When I first joined UPM in 1997, I was humbled. People were genuinely friendly and humble, to some extend a little unusual for me. For someone who lived in a busy city Kuala Lumpur most of his adult life, I was used to fellow Malaysians being nice but rarely that humble and honestly friendly. But UPM in 1997 was different - people were 'warm'. You get that sense of being in a 'kampung' where everyone was your friend. And I was not wrong about the kampung part. Most staff were from kampung and being an agriculture university at the time, a lot of them worked in farms and plantation. I loved it. That sensation of living in 'ladang and kampung' was truly present where everyone was smiling and willing to help each other. And they smiled genuinely.
But I didn't get to enjoy that warmth for long because within a few weeks I left for Southampton, UK to begin my PhD studies. And for the next 3 years after that, I was in heaven enjoying every second of my time in England (and Europe).
One of the toughest decisions I had to make in the year 2000, was to leave England after completing my PhD. My supervisor (Prof. Donald McLean) and I had worked very hard to develop Aerospace degree course in UPM's Department of Aerospace Engineering during its infancy. Prof Donald McLean was the advisor (appointed by the British Council) and the first external examiner for the Department. I was privileged to have him as my PhD supervisor. But in 2000, I had to leave England and it was hard. Some called me stupid for leaving but I had to, to continue the work of setting up Aerospace higher education system in Malaysia.
When I came back to UPM on the 14 February 2000, I was again taken aback by the warmth of the people there. Luckily nothing much about that warmth had changed in UPM at that time. That feeling of 'kampung' environment was still there. Everyone, except for one or two, were still pleasantly friendly and working together - across the board. For me, that was a bonus. It would make my job easier when everyone was working together happily. I had a monumental task. Imagine this. UPM was traditionally an agriculture university but suddenly a Department of Aerospace Engineering was being set up - the merging of two different worlds. It was an uphill battle all the way to set up everything - manpower, infrastructure, syllabus and curriculum, laboratories and ... the most difficult, the mindset. For this change to be rooted in the university as a whole, even the name of UPM changed to make way for 'modernization' around that same time - from 'Universiti Pertanian Malaysia' to 'Universiti Putra Malaysia'. 'Pertanian' is agriculture in Malay and 'Putra' is prince. So getting everyone to still be friendly and working together was a bonus to make things work faster and better, while everyone was still smiling. This was in the early 2000.
Working in UPM has never ever been dull nor boring, then and now. There were and still are opportunities everywhere if one look hard enough for them, all in the name of curiosity to learn and grow. I often tell people; staff, students, other curious professionals that if you look close enough, UPM is filled with many treasures that most people don't even know about. The challenge is to look and work hard enough to discover them. The other challenge is to not be distracted from your goals, to remain focus on what you truly want. The latter is usually the downfall of many that I have known over the past 21 years. Instead of focusing on them and their own personal career growth, they got overwhelmed with other things - politics, power, regrets.
Many asked why did I come back for my second tour. Well, why not? As I said before, UPM is an exciting place to work in and I will show you through out this website some of the exciting work and routine that rivals anyone's favorite working routine. Truth be told, after leaving UPM in 2008, I proved to myself, first and foremost, that I could commercialize my own research work. That I became an entrepreneur who had enjoyed the best of that international entrepreneur lifestyle as a result of the commercialization. One has to appreciate, around about the same time, there were some very successful companies that became super successful such as Apple, Amazon and Facebook. I had to give it a shot too. And I can forever say that I did it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After all that fun for 8 years, I had to give back to the organization that made it possible - UPM. It is my dharma (duty) to give back. By now you can gauge how much I love UPM. And in return for that, I will have to do everything I can to protect the organization and maintain its integrity.
Maybe one day you will ask why did I have to leave UPM at all in 2008 to commercialize? That is another book by itself. However, I believe everything in life happens for a reason and if you are not old enough to have experienced this, you will one day. I have lived long enough to see that happened many times over so in the end, my coming back to UPM in 2016 happened exactly how life had planned it - and slowly but surely, I began to see the reason in the 2nd tour of duty.
Returning back to UPM in 2016 also gave me the chance to 'experience' that rare opportunity to compare the 'before and after' effect. My curious mind couldn't stop but to wonder if things have changed in UPM especially those 'special' warm people feeling, whom I adored once upon a time. A lot could change in 8 years, as you will see in the stories below. As I have personally experienced, a lot can change in just 1 day - a government changed, a minister removed, prime minister resigned and friends, lost. So 8 years, what changed?
Notes: I will pick some moments in the last 4 years in UPM and present them here. I first started this section of my website in 2019 and promised to complete it by then but more and more interesting stories kept coming up. These experiences never seem to stop and I decided to not limit the 'anniversary' to any 'year' anymore and will continue to share my experiences indefinitely. Hopefully you will find these 'histories' useful one day; take the good ones and throw away the bad ones and use these experiences for your own benefit and especially for the benefit of your own country, Malaysia.
Apart from meeting up old friends and colleagues, I was interested to know the landscape of the university - obviously things has changed. New people, new laws, new rules. I was interested to find out from everyone how was life since I left in 2008. Anything changed? What changed? What's new? Who is who? It was nice to just...
It was fantastic to see familiar faces ! It sometimes felt surreal to cross path again with some of these folks and trying to reconnect from when we last saw each other 8 years ago. Apart from the people, I was also curious if some of the places I was familiar with in UPM were still around. To some extend,...