Just to recap, Ammar has always been interested to venture out on his own even in his younger days. At the tender age of 5, we sent him on a trip to spend 10 days on a farm tour in Australia. Then in his early teens, he had already told us of his plan to work in Singapore when he finished school. Singapore, because on our visits to Singapore to look up his grandmother there, he was already attracted to the modern way of city life. In 1996, when his father was the Director-General of Department of Standards Malaysia(DSM), we went on a family holiday to UK and Paris for 2 weeks. After his secondary education, we sent him to work with a Malaysian businessman who had developed a fishing industry in Thailand. In 2006, upon my retirement from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board(MPOB), I brought him and my whole family to perform the Umrah(small Haj) to Mecca and Madinah. Then he entered college to do a twinning programme with Middlesex University, doing Marketing Management, a discipline of his choice. When he was in his second year at University, we encouraged him to join his brother-in-law Abang Faly, who was manning the Selangor Tourism Booth at the International Travel Fair in Germany in April-May 2009. These early exposures to the outside world has opened up his outlook in life.
Times have changed for the better now, I hope. When I was a student overseas wayback in mid 1970s, nobody encouraged us to spread our wings especially working overseas . In general, after graduation, the scholars were required to go back home and serve the country. Maybe, the bondage that tied us down as spelt out in the scholarship agreement has prevented us from venturing out.
I hope the present graduates will be more adventurous in building their life. It is advisable for them to work and gain as much experience as possible overseas in foreign lands before coming back to serve our mother country. As our beloved Rasullullah(S.A.W.) once said 1400 years ago, 'Tuntutlah ilmu sehingga ke negeri China".
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