Those were the joyful shouts of the first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, just past midnite on 31st August 1957, when the reins of the country's administration were passed from the British government to the local people.
We celebrate 50 years of independence in Malaysia this year. Being born just a year after, I can be said to have grown up with the new nation as I have always lived here. Other than my 3 years abroad for my university education and later many other trips for business or holidays, I have had close contact with everything that was happening in the country. I now share with you a pictorial account of some of the things I have learned in the country as we grew up together :
We celebrate 50 years of independence in Malaysia this year. Being born just a year after, I can be said to have grown up with the new nation as I have always lived here. Other than my 3 years abroad for my university education and later many other trips for business or holidays, I have had close contact with everything that was happening in the country. I now share with you a pictorial account of some of the things I have learned in the country as we grew up together :

You have to first learn how to walk before you can learn how to run. It takes time and practice. You may even fall down a few times. With persistence and lots of patience, you can soon be running, even very fast!

But where are you running to? You must have a vision of the destination. No matter how young you are, you can always visualize, even dream of dreams. Anyone can do this and be amazed by the results :

I remember how hard it was to learn to ride the bicycle for the first time. I had all the while previously been comfortable in a tricycle but I was to grow up and had to learn how to balance on two wheels. I fell and fell many times, bruising my knees very badly after removing the 'trainer-wheels' of my new bicycle that my father had bought for me! But sheer determination kept me on.
I remember I had a brother who gave me some assistance. He supported the bicycle behind me and ran along with me as I stepped on the pedals. This gave me more confidence to pedal steadily for a longer distance. One day as I began to ride a longer distance than I felt I've ever done before, I looked back and suddenly realized my brother had let go of the bicycle a distance away. I was so surprised I was riding on my own that upon my realization, I just lost confidence and crashed again! hahaha
Yes, we can always do with some help in the beginning but nothing beats becoming really free on your own. To ride wherever you want to on your own with your own effort and not forgetting, without fear! I realized that the effort put in to achieve one thing successfully is often a stepping stone for the next challenge and so it was for me and the country as a whole.

Soon it was time for me to go to school. The government knew the importance of education for a brighter future and the British had left behind a good model for us to follow. My good mother would take me to school every day (until I would later rebel to take the bus on my own) to make sure I would have what it takes to have a brighter future, a personal sense of self-reliance. Isn't it interesting how the past can influence our future?


The following are some of the things I have learned growing up in Malaysia :


I always remember a saying I heard at Church one day that if the women were not organized, the Church would be disorganized! Isn't this so true? I've learned well in this country that to get women organized, you must make peace with the women first and that indeed is a great challenge for all men I believe but the blessings of success can be eternally fruitful!
The importance of effective leadership to lead and guide the people. This is true for whichever country in the world including Malaysia. We have been fortunate to have a succession of effective leaders, each contributing to the nation's needs during his time of leadership.
These would be leaders who knew how to work in a team and I was fortunate to learn the importance of this from my school which became useful in much of my adult life as in my school life. Like the country, first I was a dependent. Later I became independent and eventually, I learned how to be inter-dependent.


These were some of my core activities and past achievements :

I was an active lobbyist with the government to implement Copyright laws, working with the then Minister of Trade and Industry, Dato Kok Wee Kiat and achieved a remarkable first for my own company. We were the first to be granted 'Pioneer Status' incentives for the software development industry in Malaysia, a tax-free holiday for 5 years! The IT industry, with the help of the government International Trade division, took me around the world to market our products and became another learning opportunity for me to participate in the up and coming globalized economy.

I am glad I could do my part to help.

In this process, the Direct Sales industry, another pioneering business sought my help. It started when a fledgling MLM company sought my management services and from the one year experience in turning it around, I realized I had the suitable skill sets to provide leadership for that industry. When the next client came to me, I put my best effort to see what I could do as their Managing Director and from a ground zero operations in Malaysia, we achieved RM100 million dollar sales in the first year alone! No wonder Malaysia is ranked 12th in the world for direct selling according to the US Direct Selling News (Volume2, Issue 7, July 2006), printed by the Direct Selling Association (DSA)
My active participation in building the nation described above has received some exposure in the press and published books which I have faithfully recorded as a web journalist in my spare time.
Growing up in Malaysia and having the opportunity to raise my own family here has been a great blessing. The children are mentally and emotionally well prepared to live in any other country in the world to be happy and successful while always doing their part to contribute back to society.

Besides eating, shopping here is a favorite past time and visitors often make the comments that they seem to get more value for their money. Perhaps so as I have been able to provide for my family of six children in the country as I went about my continuous learning activities and earning enough to feed them as well.

From a child to now an adult almost as old as the nation, I have learned to appreciate the blessings of Independence and the marvels of the Free Enterprise world. Freedom is never without challenges. Many of us would rather seek for security and sacrifice our freedom but a wise man once shared with me, "In life, there are two choices, Freedom and Security. If you choose Security, you will eventually lose them both!" Now that's something to ponder about to figure it out how the Americans achieved a superpower status in the world within such a short period of time.
I personally hope the Americans will not fall to corruption where I am aware have destroyed many superpowers or dynasties of the past, notably of the longest civilization existing in the world today, the civilization state of China which is not a nation state like most modern democracies today.

Well these are my thoughts on this Merdeka Day in Malaysia. It's interesting to note that as the country turns 50, I and many of my old school mates will soon turn 50 too. You can read all about that on the special web page I have created here (https://goo.gl/Kolt60)
I like growing up and living in a developing country where we have to work for our own secure future and that the pathway isn't exactly clear at times. I like the adventure and the freedom to participate in its development as it keeps me constantly fit and trim. My children are now spread out in the world, pursuing their education and life's further experiences. With the grounding, they received while in Malaysia, I can see that they are doing very well to adapt to any country they are currently in. Today they are spread out as wide as in Singapore, USA, and China! You can read details about them in our family page found at http://familylane.info/ (http://goo.gl/CNX9ug)
Oh..there is one thing more we can learn from my riding the bicycle experience that I must mention...
If you have read this far, please give me your comments below. Love to hear from you, my dear friends and family members, on my thoughts of Malaysia's 50th Anniversary but let's leave out the politics ok?? They are always controversial anywhere in the world right? Always remember that a bird in the hand is worth more than two in the 'Bush' so be grateful always but never stop to communicate, communicate and communicate peacefully in order to improve ourselves so as not to remain complacent as a young nation! hahaha and keep smiling!
I love working with Malaysians to build better communities and a better country for everyone!
Post-dated events and developments :
2012
2013
2016
Rafizi Ramli from SF on Vimeo.
Since young, I vowed never to be a politician but I do keep track of the politics of Malaysia in my own journal here.
In Kuala Lumpur
2012
2013
The story of the old school history for the reunions after found here. An interesting video done for Hari Malaysia made in time for the 2013 general election by Pete Teo and be viewed here. It is interesting as one can find characters like Lim Kit Siang, Amiga and others interposed in the old video that is dated in the year 1957! See if you can find them as well as others you may recognize.
2014
The BIG family reunion in Singapore in this post.
2015
Watch the video above for a unique travel summary of our family history with roots from China and read about the details of my successful trip in finding our ancestral village, using collective past years of information gathered with the help of many people shared here.
2016
Latest family reunion photo in the US with the first grandchild with the stories, photos and videos found here.
2017
The Mom of our family continues to touch our lives as shared in this journal post.
2018
In Kuantan
Since young, I vowed never to be a politician but I do keep track of the politics of Malaysia in my own journal here.
(Note that as technology updates from computer screen views to the smaller smartphone screen views as well, some hypertext links highlighted above that leads to websites meant for PC screen views only will have an alternative hypertext link found in brackets if available which may not contain exact identical information. The rationale is to save time converting all the coding of websites meant for PCs only but keep them available as information storage sites meant for PCs while newer versions meant for modern smartphone views as well as PCs will move forward with new Urls and designs not necessarily containing old information of previous websites.)