27 March 2012
We flew to Phuket, Thailand, for a short holiday break and it was indeed a pleasant trip. Phuket is really a holiday destination. Tourism is the big thing there. The locals are proud of the services they can offer to the holiday makers. We had good food, relaxing massages, and spent our time mostly outdoors.....

Whatever they say, I still prefer a Thai massage anytime!

Working in Malaysia

9 March 2012
My son Ammar Zaid, who is a graduate of Middlesex University in United Kingdom, has just been offered a job with Maybank, a premier banking institution in Malaysia. Syukur Alhamdullillah, after all his hard work in his studies and effort in job-hunting since he came back from England in early 2012, he has been offered a job at last.
Welcome to working life in Malaysia. All the best in your career, my son.
Psst...I had been working with the Government for the past 32 years before my retirement in 2005. It was a rewarding career for me....Afterall these years, I realised that I was in the wrong industry!. But I am glad that I am now an entrepreneur doing a small business in the retail trade. And I realised that whatever experience and training I have had in the government service proved useful for me to practice them in the world of small business.

Entrepreneurship Development

1 December 2011
I have been approached by a local University to be a part-time lecturer in Entrepreneurship Development last September . Hence, I started doing so in November 2011. My job is to motivate the students to start up business, particularly in the Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education sector. Entrepreneurship development is vital to our Malaysian economy, The future of our economy lies in the small and medium scale business, and encouraging small and business entrepreneurs is of the utmost challenge for me. As Bill Rancic (of Donald Trump's Reality Show Apprentice fame) once said, "Fear is the greatest hurdle in small business". I totally believe this....nobody wants to loose money, which businessman like to see their investment go down the drain without any ROI. In the business world, everybody wants to profit.
Hence, my job of nurturing the impressionable minds of the youthful students is a challenging one indeed. How do I tell the students not too make too much profit out of their kindergarten charges when prices of educational toys, food and other services are escalating. This is where business ethics exercised by the kindergarten owners play an important role in operations of the centre.
Our religion Islam taught us to be fair to our customers. Excessive profits is not the practice in Islam. Muslims around the world believed there is Life after Death, unlike other religion whose followers lived only for this world. Therefore, their business ethics differ totally - they are out to make a good profit and fast. It is now or never!
I just hope my approach is acceptable to the students, comprising 99% and 1% Christian.