fragments
                         
18 December 1975... I stepped outside for some fresh air. They never let me back in again. The kindergarten I attended was run by Catholic Nuns. Its a bit disappointing when you see how I've turned out, considering I was exposed to good habits from a young age. My first 3 years of primary education were at a pretty rough school called Road 10. I know most of you are thinking, "what kind of f**ed up school name is that?" My parents fished my hide out of Road 10 and tossed me into a new fish bowl, Bukit Bintang Primary School. Things were a lot more orderly there but I was severely behind academically. I got to know the principal there quite well. At 10 I took up chess and trained professionally for a few years. While other kids were out playing ball and pulling legs off grasshoppers, I spent my days dissecting games played by grandmasters a century back. At the ripe old age of 15, I retired from competition. When I was very young, I remember being told that I would some day like girls. "NNooo!! Never!!!" And then I turned 11 years old. My first year at Sultan Abdul Samad Secondary School was a tad nightmarish. My classmates were a motley crew of hoodlums who came to school with long pieces of wood hidden in their pant legs. I felt inadequate at first because I thought they so much more endowed than I was. Then I learnt the bulges were merely weaponry. Phew!! I took up tennis somewhat seriously when I was 13 and since then it has been my favorite sport. There were 20 in my class and I got to hit 5 balls every half hour. During metal shop, a friend was hammering away at sheet metal using a huge vulcanized rubber hammer. The hammer head filed for divorce from its stem and chose to marry itself to my head. I was a really quiet kid for the first 15 years of my life but have since been a non-stop potty-mouthed jabberer. I summoned all my energy for that one final push. The veins in my neck pilgrimmed to the surface to witness the desperate final effort. A final verdict was reached. I was going to be 5ft 5" for the rest of my life. I contracted soccer fever in Form 4. I used to play barefoot until the other kids got soccer boots. It was a bit hard to play with bandages on, so I finally got a pair of my own. I had my first cigarette at 17, a Marlboro Red. My college friends were a bunch of party mammals so smokey nightclubs, branded clothing and maintaining exclusive cliques published its way into my lifestyle. At Taylor's, my friends, lecturers and even the principal used to call me the Young Marx for my deep appreciation of his ideaology, and my ability to defend almost any topic from a Marxist position. There's a quote that goes, "If you are not captivated by Marxism by 18, you are a fool. If you still are captivated by Marxism after 30, you're a damn fool" I intended to take up law as a career. Along the way, a prolific lecturer, Charlene Rajendran, was able to draw out creativity in me. I started cart wheeling towards advertising. America was the place for it, so after completing my Cambridge A Levels, I enrolled for the American Transfer Program at Inti College. I had my first non-blow up doll girlfriend in Inti. Unfortunately, things didn't end well and I found my heart in a blender that had no lid. Things got messy. My time had come to leave the nest. I was off to the Unversity of Missouri-Columbia in the midwest. In the process of helping a friend move her cupboard downstairs, I broke my foot in 2 places. Not knowing it was broken, I helped her move that same cupboard up two flights at her new apartment, and my foot ballooned into the size of a melon. I was in Missouri for exactly 1 week. I failed my grammar test twice and it was a 3 strikes you're out rule. I studied my gonads off and clocked in a 94% on my third exam. I was now in the J-School of arguably the world's best journalism school. Same girl. Same blender. But this time the lid was on. After graduating, I moved out west to San Diego with my college buddy Thom.We packed our vehicles to the roof and drove out via Route 66. Thom and I rented an apartment at Casa La Mesa. It was there that we met the guys from the band Red Channel Revue. They are some of my bestest friends till today. Got my first job as a graphic designer at the Barali Group. The Art Director, Cindy, was an absolute looker and is probably the reason why there is a shortage of priests in the Catholic Church. Under her tutelage I picked up all the fundamentals of print design that came in real handy later in my career.. I needed the money so I took on a second job as a yellemarketer. Also taught old people how to use their computers for chump change and frozen bagels. Eventually, these 3 gigs didn't really cut it for me so I looked to LA for a real job. I landed a position as an e-commerce web designer at Promotions Distributor Services (now known as Newroads) My friend Bob followed me up to LA for my interview. That trip marked the end of his two year CH3-OH abstinence. In our circle, I started to be labelled Chin the Corrupter. Eventually, Chin was dropped from my designation and I was merely known as 'The Corrupter'. Hui Chin had moved out to Los Angeles for an internship with Sony. We really hit it off that summer and I had little doubt I had found the one. We did a lot of crazy things that summer - got our hair coloured, got kissed by strangers at a Goth Club, and I got a tattoo. I developed upwards of 40 websites in my first 2 years at Newroads. And then the bubble burst. It was then that I morphed myself into a programmer. It wasn't easy making the transition, but I actually finished 2nd in my UNIX class full of Neo-type Matrix geeks. My eyesight took a beating as a result of all the programming books I had to read for school. I got my first pair of glasses. Hui Chin's friend Ai Vee was in town and they were planning to skydive off a plane. I saw that as the perfect opportunity to propose via a giant 10m x 10m sign which read, "Hui Chin, I wanna grow old with you" Hui Chin and I tied the knot at the Inn of the Seventh Ray in Malibu on a gorgeous summer afternoon. Brian from Red Channel was my Best Man, Thom my emcee and Bob my videographer. It had always been a life long dream of mind to live, work and travel in Europe. This became a reality in 2004 when we moved to Stratford, London. I posted my CV on a Wednesday, got a call on Thursday, and had a PHP programming job on Friday. eSpares was located on the edge of the Thames river in Chelsea and had the most stunning view. I only spent a few months with eSpares before I joined Miller Bainbridge, a boutique ad agency in Clerkenwell, London. It was a really well run place and I had a very formative experience working there. Sophie and I had a bucket list of things we wanted to do while we were in Europe, and I think we checked most of it off. We capped off our 2 year European honeymoon with a trip to Jordan and Egypt. It was in Cairo that Oliver first came about. We moved back to Malaysia in 2007. I joined my cousin Gary at Digital Commerce as their Creative Director. Oliver Chin Yu Shen came kicking and screaming into the world. Fatherhood was the most lifechanging event that has occured in my life. I've never seen a single person bring so much joy to so many people around before. We purchased our first house in Gasing Indah. Stay tuned for more