A school drop-out who turn engineer

At 12, a kid got his first job with a food producer after he found his dislike in class. He roamed all over his village and outside his village. All his toys were DIY toys.

He and his friend were flying kites on a hill. He picked the hill as his kite-flying ground because he knew he would not have to face all the entanglement by branches of trees, street wires and what not.

Plenty of Bachang fruit grew in his village and he recall how its latex could react with his wounds on his legs cut by the shrubs of his running and jumping.

Slicing a length to both edges of a bamboo stem to a thickness that provided a good retraction, he wanted his kite to sway quickly in the air according to his decision. He knew his kite can’t be decorated with tails that would slow down the speed in the air.

After completing that bamboo stem, he would get another for the vertical tied tightly at the center perpendicular to the earlier one. Next, he would pour boiled-water onto some tapioca flour as glue to paste kite-paper onto the bamboo-cross and to dry it under the sun.

He would look out for some discarded bulbs to crush them into granulated glasses. Mixing the granulated glasses with egg-white, the sticky-paste is poured onto a piece of paper. The paste in the folded paper was used to coat a determined portion of his kite rope and put to dry under the sun. Using an empty condensed-milk tin as a roller, the total length of the kite rope was decided.

He smiled happily on seeing his kite actively in the air as he recalled yesterday next to my working desk while describing how much fun he had as a kid. Now almost 60, his kite story pop-up after his other interest; motor-scrambling activity that ended him with a fractured femur while making a turn at the demolished round-about on Hang Tuah Road.

In his late teen, he had begun on making moulds for industrial use, an interest that make him an engineer to secure a monthly pay of above Ten Thousands Ringgit. To me, he is a successful man, bearing in mind he hailed from a poor family and he didn’t get proper education.

The moral of this true story:

Education result is important but is not everything.