Goons on a Plane and Malaysian Kiasu-ism

I was on a plane to Kelantan. It was one of those turbo-prop jet driven flying machines.  Seated behind me were a few of these obnoxious goon who are desperate for attention.  Particularly obnoxious was the one behind my seat. Let me relate this properly.

Even before the plane had taken off, they were already talking particularly loudly.  From the punctuation and the emphasis in their sentences, they were desperate for other on the plane, particularly the air-hostesses, I think, to know the following;

·         They know a number of political figures

·         They see these political figures often

·         They know a number of very successful businessmen

·         they are connected.

As Muslims, we are not allowed to think bad things about others. With that in mind, let us give these attention seekers the benefit of the doubt.  The plane took off and their talk took off too, in volume and the one in the seat behind me began to punctuate their laughter with drumming on the back of my seat.  At first, I thought I turn around and give him a piece of my mind but then just before I did that, I realized that what they were saying was more interesting than their behavior annoying. So, I thought, I’d listen more closely.  Here is the result.

Apparently, one of them claims that he knows of a piece of land that the government wants to develop and they have opened the project to applicants.  This goes back and forth for a bit.  They came up with a plan that they would apply for this project.  It was unclear what the plan was but perhaps that was because I was munching on something when they mentioned it.  The consensus between then was that they would definitely get this project because some of them know certain political leaders.  To get to this point, there were a few side tracks where they imagined what they would do when they become rich. 

Then comes the Pièce de résistance, at this point they were convinced that they were going to get this project in spite of the following facts (inferred from their own words),

·         they do not yet have a company under whose name they will apply for this multimillion ringgit project

·         they have no expertise in the relevant area involved in the project

·         they do not have the experts in these areas

·         they do not have any experience in the area, discipline, industry and whatever else involved in the project.

Now, in spite of all that they were drumming away their glee on the backs of the seats top punctuate their laughter over the excesses that they would get up to when they are rich.  At that point, one of them claimed that he knew a certain Malaysian tycoon whose name I shall not mention because the man is very well-known.  So close that, the man claims, he could tonjol kepala the man: for those uninitiated into the Malay customs, to tonjol kepala is to push the head of another person with your fingers as some adults would do to children when the child makes a stupid mistake or when adults, usually the lesser educated and of lower social status, would do to each other at the kedai kopi.  In this context, he meant to show that he and the tycoon were extremely close.  Here’s the thing. I don’t claim I know this particular tycoon but I have on a couple of occasions seen him in person and the description coming from the chap behind me did not fit the behavior of the tycoon that I saw.  Anyway, the reason one of these goons brought up this tycoon was because he said the tycoon owned a helicopter.  He said that he would borrow the tycoon’s helicopter and they could fly over their project to see its progress.  That was when I cracked up.  I thought here was a project that was doomed to fail even before it was applied for.  I have met a number of entrepreneurs in my time and these goons did not share any characteristics with them. 

Entrepreneurs / industrialists generally know what they are doing. If they didn’t know it, they would learn what they need to know. One man I knew ran a rather successful restaurant and catering service. He learnt the art of cooking for a lot of people when he was a cook in the military.  The thing that struck me about this particular successful entrepreneur was that he did the cooking himself in the beginning. When his business grew, he would spend the first half of his days in the kitchen supervising his cooks and making sure they got the dishes right.  Another entrepreneur, has his house right beside his fish ponds and he spends a number of days per week at the fish farm.  None of the successful entrepreneurs and industrialists that I have met would be flying over their projects in a borrowed helicopter.  Besides, I wonder if the tycoon go to be a successful industrialist by lending out his helicopter to every Tom, Dick and Harry, especially when flying a helicopter involves aircraft fuel, flight clearance, and a host of other things not the least of which the person flying it would need to be a trained helicopter pilot.  A close friend of mine flies a helicopter for the police and I once asked him to describe flying a helicopter in detail, and I thought flying my remote control heli was hard enough.

I got a look at the would-be entrepreneurs when we landed in Kota Bharu.  I was smiling but I’ll bet would not have been smiling if they could read my mind.

There is a downside to this story, if you ever spend some time with politicians, any politicians from any party, and you will soon realize that this kind of people are ever present around them. Perhaps not exactly like the ones I met on the plane but certainly their brethren and kindred spirits.