I recently discovered a site called Malaysiaresume.com that  has a collection of successful Malaysian entrepreneurs and their stories. I thought it would be a great opportunity to contribute a couple of stories as I have a number of really successful friends who are entrepreneurs.

I have so far lined up two stories. One who built his business from scratch and another who took over his family business and is making it even bigger. I’m going to start with the latter first, because as most of you know, Pierre’s like a buddy of mine that I see all the time. I first met Pierre through work. He was a marketing manager for Mister Potato and a big believer in blog advertising. He wanted to run a campaign on Nuffnang and on my blog because I had found out, he was a loyal reader of my blog.

The place we first met? He called me for a breakfast meeting at the KL Hilton. I remember breakfast that day costing just the both of us RM70 per person or something. We somehow hit it off though. While we started with that first meeting mostly talking about work we ended up meeting up for many more meals and eventually became really good friends. Then we started sharing the same hobbies, one of them today being golf and became even closer.

Today I look back and I once said to him “You know ah the first time we met I was wondering to myself  ‘Wah this Mamee fella so high class… breakfast also want to eat at the Hilton’. I had never before had breakfast at the Hilton. He laughed about it… and we now meet often over Roti Canai or Nasi Lemak.

It is through this friendship that Pierre has found the opportunity to tell me his stories over time. I think he has an interesting story that I will share here.

Pierre’s family business is Mamee Double-Decker, the largest Malaysian snacks company to date, with over RM600 million in annual revenue.

Mamee was born in small town Malacca in the 70s as a partnership between Pierre’s Father (Datuk Wira Pang Tee Chew) and Grandfather (Datuk Pang Chin Hin). Pierre’s grandfather who was introduced to the instant noodle business by his friend sent his son (Pierre’s father) to Japan to learn the trade. When Pierre’s father returned they started their instant noodle business under the brand “Lucky”. That however failed largely due to their inexperience.
The Pangs however persisted and with the lessons they learned from Lucky, they then started Mamee. Pierre’s grandfather decided on the name because “mommy” was the first word most of us learned to say. In the early days, Mamee did moderately well.

Then something happened one day that would change the future of Mamee. Pierre’s father was out making deliveries when he saw some kids eating raw instant noodles right out of the packet. He thought if kids were already eating raw instant noodles out of a pack, why don’t make a noodle snack just for the kids.

 

My friend Pierre is among the new generation of the Pang family to take over the management of Mamee. Pierre grew up in Malacca while watching on the sidelines as his father grew Mamee. He then went on to get his degree in Information Systems from the University of Melbourne. The unwritten rule among the Pangs was that before any family members could come back to work in Mamee they must first spend a minimum of three years earning working experience from the outside world.

This suited Pierre just fine. His passion was always in advertising so when he returned from Australia, he found a job at Ogilvy. He spent two years in Ogilvy learning the ropes of advertising, handling key accounts like Lenovo, IBM and HSBC. Always an entrepreneur at heart, Pierre left Ogilvy to start his own creative and digital signage agency 8dge, which he explains was one of the best times of his life. Three years into growing 8dge though, his Father told him that it was time for him to come back and work on the family business.

Five years after graduation, Pierre finally joined Mamee. He didn’t start at a top level position but rather as a brand manager of Mister Potato to earn his salt. Prove himself he did. When he took over as Mister Potato’s brand manager, Mister Potato was merely at half the market share of their main competitor Pringles. Three years under Pierre’s leadership, he had grown Mister Potato’s market share to double that of Pringles.

Part of Pierre’s strategy to grow Mister Potato as a brand was to become the Global Snacks Sponsor for Manchester United. The sponsorship deal which had Manchester United players endorse Mister Potato put Mister Potato in the eyes of 4.7 billion people who watch the Barclays Premier League.

Confident with Pierre’s abilities after Mister Potato’s success, Pierre’s father put him in his current role: General Manager of Sales and Marketing  to work his magic on the rest of Mamee’s brands. One of his key projects, to save the very first product that Mamee started with: Mamee Instant Noodles.

Mamee instant noodles had always been number 2 in market share in Malaysia. In recent years however, intense competition from aggressive Indonesian players threatened to dethrone them. The Indonesian brands had more money and were not afraid to spend it to “buy” market share in Malaysia. Mamee’s instant noodles division faced two choices: Continue to lose market share or cut its own price leading to a potential loss.

Like all entrepreneurs, Pierre decided to do something different. He traveled around Asia to China, Taiwan, and Japan to find inspiration on what to do with Mamee instant noodles. When he returned, an idea had taken hold in his head. While the instant noodles market in Malaysia was a big and growing one, it was also very backward when it came to innovation. Rather than compete head to head with all its rivals, he decided to pivot Mamee and rebrand it as a more premium instant noodles called Mamee Chef.

Mamee Chef was a very differentiated product. Its noodles were made with a new machine that he convinced Mamee to spend RM60 million on, creating better texture and a premium quality feel to it. It contained condiments like dehydrated prawns to accompany its different flavours, making the consumer feel that this wasn’t just instant noodles. You were eating a proper meal. Last but not least, he worked with Dato Chef Ismail, a celebrity chef in Malaysia to create the flavours of the soup to make sure it was something Malaysians would love.

Mamee Chef proved to be an overnight success. In the first few months, it was flying off the shelves faster than Mamee could restock it. While the instant noodle industry grew 2% annually, Mamee Chef was growing at ten times that.

I chose to write a story about my friend Pierre because of his inspiring story. I have many friends who have been blessed enough to be able to inherit a family business but he not just inherited it, he helped grow it. That’s what entrepreneurs do right? We take whatever we have and we make something better out of it. That’s why Pierre inspires me and I hope his story inspires you and anyone else who has a family business no matter how big or small.

 

Check out Malaysiaresume.com for more Malaysian success stories.

In case you don’t already know, I’m on a new microblogging platform called Dayre.

Here’s the thing, I think I’m super active on social media. Well I don’t quite post anything on Facebook or Twitter (apart from my Instagram shares) but I do share quite a bit on my Instagram and on my blog. Now the thing about Instagram is that I’m very selective about what I post up. I’m afraid of spamming peoples’ feed so I can’t really share how my daily life is like.

Now my blog used to be for that purpose… the purpose of a diary I can keep for myself. But now I find it harder and harder to do that because at the end of a tiring day it’s hard for me to sit down in front of my desktop and recall whatever I did with my day and slowly upload pictures and compose a post. So if you notice, I don’t really talk about my daily life on this blog. I share other snippets…. like Things Shorty & Fatty Say or like deep thoughts like “A Letter to My Future Son” or my recent post about “Expensive shopping“.

The small bits of my daily life like where I went for a meeting, what I ate… how I felt at a certain point of the day have all been lost… until now. That’s exactly what I use Dayre for. Dayre is a microblogging platform that breaks down blogging into very simple actions.

I can take a picture, check in at a location, type a status update, upload a video or even use a sticker to express myself.

Shorty and I both just got on it and it seems really popular. I’m seeing more and more people on it. Today I have like 1,500 followers on Dayre and I keep getting notifications for more and more people following me.

So if you don’t already have Dayre… go download it on the App Store or Google Play and please follow me and Shorty at (dayre.me/timothytiah) and (dayre.me/fourfeetnine).

Hey guys… for those of you who don’t regularly pick up The Edge business newspaper, there’s a story about Nuffnang this week and me looking kinda fat.

Shorty on the other hand was in the New Paper in Singapore about how Fighter got cyber-bullied.

Hope you guys caught some of these articles.

 

Last Saturday Shorty and I took some time off taking care of Fighter and attended one of the most fun events we’ve been to in a year: The Nuffnang Food Fest. It’s the first event of its kind in Malaysia that used social media currency… that means all you had to do was tweet a vendor and you would get free food.

The stores we had there (vendors) ranged from big brands like Yakult, Nandos or Chatime to more indy kind of food brands like SS2 Goreng Pisang or even popular new ones like MyBurgerLab.

It was so much fun. Here are some pictures I took that day.

This was how crowded it was. People lining up for food with their smartphones in their hand ready to tweet.

This is some liquid nitrogen ice-cream I got from a new place called NBrew. They have an outlet in Sunway Pyramid.

This the people at NBrew making my liquid nitrogen ice-cream. I assumed that the guy here is the entrepreneur behind this brand just solely from the passion he seemed to have when talking about NBrew.

There were loads of other ice-cream shops too. I like this one called Cielo Dolci. They had a variety of very different ice-cream flavours ranging from Nasi Lemak to Tau Fu Fah.

I loved their Tau Fu Fah and their Coconut with Gula Melaka. You can find them any other day at Paradigm Mall.

Maggi had a booth at Nuffnang Foodfest too and this human sized packet greeted you right outside. I saw loads of people taking pictures with it.

Me with the people at SS2 Goreng Pisang.

I thought SS2 Goreng Pisang was a cool story. It was a well-known family business started long ago… then the daughter (the one in red) decided to come out and expand the business so they opened up a store in 1-Utama. Plus she started going into social media to help market their Goreng Pisangs. Cool huh.

Here is the first store that Shorty got food from. It’s called Niko Niko Onigiri.

And yes that is the back of Shorty’s head right in front of the picture here. I had no idea what onigiri was before today until Shorty carefully explained it to me. It’s like Japanese rice with salmon or chicken teriyaki wrapped in seaweed to look like a sandwich or something.

I took this picture in the middle of the afternoon while looking at the skies. Why? Because a few days before the weather forecast for Saturday afternoon was rainy with a chance of thunderstorm. We were like whaaat… if it rained it would totally mess up the whole thing. So what we ended up doing was hiring a “bomoh” (sort of like a Witch Doctor) to help keep the rain away from our event. Apparently I hear this is common practice only in Malaysia and when I tell people from overseas about this they’re like “Whaat?”.

So at the point I took this picture I was looking at the sky. There were dark clouds building up in the distance and I was a little concerned. But the whole evening flew by without rain. So I guess to some extent… the Bomoh worked.

Shorty was super popular at the event. The minute she stepped in, people were all asking to take pictures with her one by one. Some surprised and how really small and cute she actually looked in real life. This is her giving one of her readers an autograph.

So that’s about all the pictures I took at the Nuffnang Food Fest. It was the first of its kind and a huge success with over 5,000 tweets and an estimated 2,000-3,000 attendees within just those few hours. Our hashtag for Nuffnang Food Fest #NNFoodFest was the Top Trend on Twitter for the rest of the day.

Did any of you guys go for Nuffnang Food Fest? Tell me what you thought about it.

Oh and if you missed Nuffnang Food Fest, there’s ChurpOut 2013 coming up in two weeks. Don’t miss that.

So recently one of my colleagues at work decided that they wanted to do something fun. Instead of doing the usual tech work they wanted to do something totally random.

They decided to do a game called “The Ultimate Friend Test” and today they just launched it. It’s really a game that you play with your friends to see how well you know your mutual friends on Facebook.

Shorty and I have been playing it and it got addictive. The one thing it needs to be more fun though is for more people to play it so please download The Ultimate Friend Test on the Apple App Store or Google Play.  Do me a favour and rate it too 🙂

And of course tell me if you like it and I’ll give the feedback to my team in case they plan to do more games in future.

Thanks guys.

 

After a month in the hospital, Shorty finally got discharged today. I gotta say it’s been a tough month and now that half the battle is over (with Shorty getting well enough to get discharged), I feel relieved but also exhausted. Exhausted that it’s been a really tiring one month… almost feel like I need a holiday after juggling this ordeal and work.

Still it was nice to see Shorty finally out and looking more like herself today, after losing some… I don’t know.. 10 KG or so in a week.

Fighter is still in the NICU. Shorty felt a bit heavy hearted having the leave the hospital with Fighter still in intensive care but we promised Fighter that we would go back see him every day. Today he gave us a bit of a scare. While I was at the National Registrar getting Fighter registered and his birth certificate done, Shorty suddenly messaged me and told me that Fighter was suddenly breathing very heavily and he was beginning to turn blue. The alarms in the devices that monitor him was also going off.

The nurses told Shorty to leave the NICU while they checked him. Shorty waited outside for what must’ve been the longest 5 minutes ever. Finally Shorty couldn’t take it and went back in and found Fighter breathing normally again and colour coming back to his skin.

The Doctor did a chest x-ray and a blood test to make sure everything was okay and it turned out it was. The cause of it was Fighter breathed in a little bit of milk.

The nurse later told us that something like that happened to another baby before. The mother was discharged and was saying bye to the baby and the baby went into some temporary condition as well.. almost as if to get the mother’s attention and to get the mother to stay. We told Fighter not to worry.. and that we will be back to see him many more times.

I can’t wait for Fighter to grow out of his incubator. But I’m thankful that things seem to be okay so far. Thank you God and thank you everyone for your prayers.

 

Okay so I finally have the time to sit down now to blog about my experience in the operating theater when Fighter was born. Actually I totally forgot about it until Shorty reminded me. Seems like this is an entry she wants to read herself too.

———————

Shorty was lying on her hospital bed that they had just pushed down from her ward. Just a few hours earlier Dr Teresa had told us that her severe preeclampsia had escalated. We could no longer control her blood pressure and there was suspected water in her lungs. We had to deliver the baby today.

On her hospital bed, Shorty was dressed in the hospital gown that had become her uniform for the past 3 weeks. Both her hands had tubes coming out of them. The doctors had used it just a few hours ago to put in medicine that could help bring her blood pressure down and something called magnesium sulfate that was meant to protect the baby’s brain and prevent Shorty from going into a stroke during surgery.

Shorty looked at me and said “I hope you can come in with me.”.

Shorty and I have had this talk before. That no matter how scared of blood I may be, I was going to be there with her when she delivered Fighter. Because this was an emergency procedure though, we weren’t sure if the Doctor would let me in so we were waiting on the Doctor to come to see if they would let me in during the procedure.

Then Doctor Teresa showed up all dressed in scrubs. She told the nurses to make preparations for me to go into the Operating Theater with Shorty. A nurse immediately handed me a form to sign. The form said something like I would leave if the Doctor ever told me to leave the theater…. and that “I understand that the cutting of the umbilical cord is only done by a trained medical professional”. I guess some Fathers in the past probably insisted on cutting the cord… like “cutting a ribbon” at the opening of a restaurant or something. I had no problems though… I didn’t need to cut anything. I just needed to be with my wife.

A nurse led me to a changing room where I changed into scrubs myself.

Then she told me to wait. i waited for about 10 minutes and then she led me into the Operating Theater. As I walked in, the surgery looked like it was already underway.

The Operating Theater was quite a spacious room. I counted 3 Doctors and 7 Nurses in there. I sat beside Shorty’s upper body with a barrier that blocked my view of the surgery that was going on at her stomach level. Our gynae Dr Teresa seemed to be working hard on that area. I heard her say “So much water…”, which I thought referred to Shorty being really bloated from all the water retention.

Behind the barrier with me was another Doctor, the anesthesis who kept checking with Shorty to see if she felt any pain. Pain wasn’t something Shorty looked like she was feeling. In fact she looked only semi-conscious. As I held her hand throughout the thing and talked to her, I heard muffles at most coming from her.

To my back, standing at the corner was our neonatologist, a specialist in premature babies. He was there with his team waiting for Fighter to be delivered. I sat there with Shorty for a good ten minutes, listening to the water being sucked out of Shorty’s womb with a tube like what they use at the dentist.

When those first ten minutes ended, I heard Dr Teresa say “Audrey… you’re going to feel a bit of a push now ok?”.

Shorty mumbled back something which I think was an “Okay”.

Then I heard the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in my life: Fighter’s cry.

In those next few seconds, so many things were going through my mind. I remember initially feeling relieved that his cry was so loud. I was thinking that if his cry was so loud, his lungs should be okay. I was thinking of how he looked like but I was too nervous to look at him. I don’t know why… it was sort of like going on a blind date with someone and you feel nervous about looking at that someone that you’ve been talking to for a long time.

Eventually I mustered the courage to turn my head and I saw Fighter for the first time in my life. He was so small, crying and kicking around while the neonatologist cleaned him and helped him breathe with some sort of a portable breathing device. Then after a few minutes they wrapped him around in a blanket and Fighter settled down. The Doctor brought him over to me and Shorty and showed Fighter to us close up. Shorty had her eyes closed and seemed to be sleeping. So I looked at the Doctor and asked the question that I knew Shorty would ask: “Is he okay?”.

The Doctor said that he was okay for now but he had to take him back to the nursery for more tests. But right now he looked fine. Right then the nurses brought in a mobile incubator that was rolled around on wheels. Fighter was put into it and brought away. I spent the next 30 minutes of the surgery or so with Shorty holding her hand as she was unconscious as they sewed her up. I remember hearing Doctor Teresa say “The placenta was so unhealthy”. That was the placenta that was giving Shorty her high blood pressure and all the problems we had but I was still grateful. Grateful that this placenta had brought Fighter this far.

For a minute I wanted to look beyond the barrier to see what Doctor Teresa was working on in the womb. But I was afraid that I might throw up at the sight of blood. I imagined Dr Teresa telling me off “We’re already having a complicated procedure here… don’t make it more complicated for us”. So I kept my eyes on Shorty the whole time and didn’t look anywhere else.

Just before the procedure ended, the anesthetist Dr Chua brought me out of the Operating Thearter. I went to the changing room, changed out of my scrubs and headed back to the ward to wait for Shorty. Some time later, the nurses rolled her back in on her bed. Shorty was awake then. She asked me “What happened?”.

I looked to her and said “You don’t remember anything”. She replied with a no.

Then I held her hand and said “You did it… you’re my champion. You gave birth to our beautiful baby boy. He’s small.. but he’s ours”.

PS: I have to thank all the Doctors and nurses that were involved in Shorty and Fighter’s case from almost 4 weeks ago leading up to this operation. Each and all of them have given Shorty and Fighter so much care I don’t know how we would have done this without them. Thank you.

This afternoon Jude Maximus Tiah aka Fighter was born. At 31 weeks, he’s a tiny baby, premature and only weighing 1.13 KG. To give you an idea of how small Fighter is right now, here’s a picture of the incubator he is in.

He’s so small that they had to put him in an intensive care unit where a specialist can monitor him to make sure he grows well. We’re not out of the woods yet because premature babies could run into problems but we’re hoping Fighter will be healthy. So far the Doctor says Fighter is doing okay.

Shorty is still in the hospital recovering from the surgery and the nurses are trying to keep her blood pressure down. I think I will write more about my experience in the Operating Theater some time in the future. Not tonight though… because I’m feeling really mentally exhausted. It’s been a long but fulfilling day. I woke up this morning not knowing that my son will be born today but now that he’s here, I feel relieved. I just pray he grows to be a healthy baby.

Thank you all for all your prayers and well wishes. Thank you God for protecting Shorty and Fighter.

Daddy and Mommy loves you Fighter.

Dear Fighter,

Today’s date will be a date I will remember for the rest of my life. It will be the date of your birthday. You see I woke up this morning to news of your Mom. The Doctor found that her blood pressure and pulse have gone out of control and that she has water in her lungs, making it hard for her to breathe.

So the Doctor has decided that she has to deliver you in a few hours time. I sit now by your mom’s bedside typing this to you on my laptop. Your mom is sleeping on the bed, with tubes sprawling across her from both her hands and machines plugged into her to monitor both your vitals and hers.

According to a monitor right next to your Mom, your heart is beating away healthily. I pray that means you are ready. Your mom has done all she can in the past 3 weeks, now it’s your turn to fight on. Don’t be scared. Our hearts will be with you throughout your fight. Remember your parents love you.

I can’t wait to see you Fighter.

Shorty’s energy in the past 24 hours has seriously deteriorated. If you had the wonderful experience to know Shorty in real life, she’s this really bubbly girl that laughs every 3 minutes either at jokes someone else makes or jokes she makes herself. The Shorty today is nothing like that. She’s suffering from a bad headache and blurry vision from the progressing blood pressure. She can’t talk without taking breaths between every few words. I did manage to get her to laugh for a few seconds at my Phil Dunphy impression but that didn’t last more than a moment.

The Doctor has responded by once again increasing her dosage to keep the blood pressure down but she is already at almost the highest dosage that can be given.

She wanted to go for our routine walk around the ward today but while she normally manages 2-3 small rounds, today she only managed one. I put her back into bed, drew the curtains and stroked her head while she slowly fell asleep. She likes that.

Before she slept she whispered something that I didn’t hear the first time. Then I leaned in and asked her what she said, with a very soft voice I heard it “I wish you could sleep here with me”. “You mean on the couch here? I can”. But that’s not what she meant. “I mean sleep right here with me on the same bed”. Then I remembered… it has been more than two weeks since we have had the luxury of sleeping on the same bed as husband and wife. I always used to say how she would always just face away from me and hug a bolster on the side anyway so she wouldn’t even realize that I’m there. But I realize now it’s more than that. I miss listening to the sound of her soft breaths and just being able to wake up in the middle of the night and look to my left to see her right there.

Then as I sat there next to her as she slept, still stroking her head with my right hand I started to reminisce happier times. Like the months we spent in California last year and all the simple things like just talking to her while I was driving the car or riding a bike.

The funny stories she would tell me, the witty jokes and how she used to bounce around like a bobble head whenever she laughs. I realize how much joy Shorty brings me everyday.

It’s painful watching her deteriorate like that. I wish I could trade places with her now. That I was the one suffering from preeclampsia for Fighter but I know all I can do is be that rock to her. If this experience has taught me one thing, its that I know I married the right woman. Before she dosed off, Shorty whispered
“I can’t wait to see Fighter. To bring him home”.

I can’t wait for Fighter too… but I also can’t wait to have my Shorty back at her normal self again.