My leetle dotcom has offices in both Malaysia and Singapore.
So sometimes I find myself in Singapore and sometimes, my Singaporean partner Ming finds himself in Malaysia on business trips.
Yet, months ago when our leetle dotcom first started Ming constantly expressed how Malaysia was very ‘unsafe’ and how he was very very afraid to cross the border especially to Johor.
He always mentioned how a lot of his friends going over to Johor have been robbed or had their cars stolen.
And I always told him how ridiculous I thought it was.
Sure… our criminal record isn’t anywhere as clean as Singapore’s but it’s not bad enough to fear coming over to the country.
Yet, this morning I opened the newspapers and read about how two Singaporeans were kidnapped in Johor and held for four days before being released for a ransom of RM2.5 million.
If Ming ever finds out about this…. Netccentric Pte Ltd (our leetle dotcom) is going to have to foot the bill in hiring bodyguards for his protection whenever he’s in Malaysia.
But it’s ok… we will spend within our means.
Rather than having imported bodyguards like this which would probably cost $10,000 (approx RM36,000) a month (which excludes the RM3,000 air fare for flying them over to Malaysia).
We can have budget bodyguards like this that cost RM2.50 an hour (which includes the RM1 bus fare to take him to work every day).
Gunalah Barangan Buatan Malaysia!
Or… if all else fails…
I could bring Ming to this little shop in KL.
And he could buy himself some protection.
As for me…
Two days ago I drove across to Penang Bridge back to Penang.
And safe or not safe…. it feels soooo good to be back home (though I’ll be flying to Taiwan in a few days).
PS: You can read the article on the kidnapping here.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space