My Key Career Achievements in Malaysia System.

Growing up in a Muslim majority country - Malaysia, I hold genuine respect for Monarchy & Islam as the nation's official belief & religion. My family practises Daoism quietly and privately as part of daily life within my own home . On a personal level, Buddhism has become the philosophy and way of life I have grown closest to particularly since the passing of my friend. The concepts of karma, cause and effect and the belief that things naturally course-correct over time have anchored me in ways that are difficult to fully articulate. I am grateful to be living in a country that for all its complexities, remains broadly tolerant and continues to allow different faith systems to exist alongside one another in relative peace

Back in 2020, when the Movement Control Order came into effect and lockdown began, a quiet panic set in. As a freelancer without a stable monthly income, the uncertainty of whether I could make it through financially began to consume me.

The worry did not stay contained, it spiralled, and before long it had taken hold of my sleep in 2021. Night after night, I could not switch off. At my worst, I went two full weeks without being able to fall asleep at all. What turned things around was stumbling across a hypnotherapist online. Rather than masking the problem with medication, the approach was about learning to live alongside it and gradually, through consistent daily practices like journaling with hand and breathing exercises.

I found my way back to sleep in 2022. It took years of practice to fully settle and back to 'normal' in 2023, but I came through it without a single pill, and I am deeply grateful for that. Today, my sleep is no longer at the mercy of my surroundings or the noise in my head. I wake up each morning feeling genuinely refreshed. I begin the day with prayer and I carry a quiet gratitude that the root of my struggle was never hormonal or chemical in nature. The practices I developed during that difficult period of Covid remain a part of my daily life, and I have no intention of letting them go.

Growing up in a traditional household where sex education was never discussed, and where my parents simply did not have the language or comfort to approach the topic, I was left to piece things together on my own. The internet arrived early, and through classmates at school, I was first exposed to pornography at 14. Without any emotional awareness or guidance, it became a habitual tool for self-relief and for years I had no sense of the harm it was quietly causing, only that it provided momentary comfort in the moment.

It was not until Covid and the Movement Control Order that I came across the nofap movement and began to understand the science and reasoning behind it. That discovery reframed a great deal. What I have come to understand since is that self-control is perhaps the most demanding practice of all and it exists on a spectrum, not as a fixed state. There are highs and lows, setbacks and progress, much like everything else in life that is worth working on.

Sport and physical fitness were never priorities growing up as my focus was always locked onto the next goal... the next creative pursuit... one after another. Body image and weight were things I simply was not paying close attention to. When Covid hit and movement was restricted, my pattern got worse. Food delivery became a daily crutch, movement dropped to almost nothing and one day I stepped on the scale and looked in the mirror: 90kg.

The number did not lie, even if I had been telling myself that carrying extra weight was fine haha. That self-assurance started to crack when my sleep quality declined and daily life began to feel heavier in ways I could not ignore. The people around me started saying what I had not wanted to hear that my weight had crossed into genuinely unhealthy territory.

That was the turning point. A friend who had made the change himself became the model I needed. He inspired me and walked alongside me through the process, and I am grateful for that.

Back in 2017, just before graduating, I set my sights on hiking the tallest mountain in Malaysia and invited three friends to make the journey with me. To prepare, I committed to running laps around my university stadium daily, building the physical foundation I knew I would need.

The hike itself was demanding, but what I remember most is the final stretch to the peak. By that point, it was no longer a physical challenge — it was entirely a mental one. There were moments I genuinely wanted to quit. Having my friends there as anchors made the difference. Their presence pulled me through when my own resolve was wavering, and I made it to the top.

Had I given in to those moments of doubt, I would have turned back just short of the summit. That experience was the first time I truly understood the power of the mind — how it can either close the door on an outcome or hold it open long enough for you to walk through.

It took close to two years to reach this milestone as a solo creator and small freelance team, and it is worth being clear that this was revenue, not profit. My best year brought in RM107,263.97 but outflow is RM117,837.39, so turning that into something genuinely profitable, starting from zero with no safety net, was a different challenge entirely due to the environment, culture and perception here.

I will not pretend luck played no part. For someone in my industry, with my personal principles, circumstances, and background, a fair amount of it was unavoidable and I acknowledge that honestly. What I am most grateful for is every paying client I encountered along the way, people from all walks of life and all races who chose to place their trust and their money in my work. That faith meant everything, and I do not take a single one of them for granted.

I remember my mother telling me plainly that sending me to university was not something the family could afford. The realistic path laid out before me was Form 6, followed by whatever public university would take me. I understood what that meant — having navigated enough of Malaysia's reality by then to know that the creative courses I genuinely wanted to pursue were unlikely to come through that route.

Faced with that, I made a decision. To ease the burden on my parents and to give myself a real shot at studying what I was truly passionate about, I committed to doing whatever it took in SPM to earn a scholarship. I understood clearly that this was my make-or-break moment — there was no other door. I gave it everything I had.

I will be honest — part of what drove me was also not wanting to spend another two years studying subjects I felt nothing for. That was real too, and it sharpened my focus considerably.

There is a particular satisfaction in being able to contribute back to the country you grew up in — knowing that what you put in goes toward development and infrastructure rather than disappearing into corruption. During my best year, the one where revenue and profit aligned most favourably, I contributed RM1,374 in taxes to the Malaysian government. It is a modest amount by any measure, but it was a genuine contribution, made honestly. As an ordinary citizen who started from nothing, having the chance to give something back to the place that shaped me carried a meaning that the number alone does not fully capture.

I will admit that for a long time I was either delusional or wilfully optimistic — turning away from what was genuinely happening on the ground, particularly within Malaysia's art and design industry. There is a ceiling to how far you can push within certain environments, and the hard truth is that the people and systems around you will not shift until they are ready to — until something moves them to make that choice themselves.

Learning to accept that reality, and to work around it rather than against it, has been part of growing up. I still intend to hold firmly to my personal values and ethics — without causing harm to anyone, and without aligning myself with anything that operates in the darker currents of this space. The path forward will require patience and careful navigation, but I am committed to finding it on my own terms.

Across my years of riding, I have had the privilege of getting to know four different motorcycles - my father's Honda C70, my first bike the Yamaha FZ150i, followed by the Naza N5 250, and eventually the Ducati Scrambler Sixty2 through Ducati Malaysia. I do not have an exact figure, but my best estimate puts the combined mileage at well over 30,000km, covering ground across Peninsular Malaysia.

Riding through this peninsula has been one of the most genuine ways I have come to know and appreciate this land, its landscapes, its food, and the richness of its culture encountered along the way. There is a kind of understanding you only arrive at from the saddle, and I am grateful for every kilometre of it.

This is the car that has been with me since my university days in 2016 - a full manual transmission that my parents drove all the way down from Penang to Cyberjaya for me. When it first arrived, the odometer sat at around 60,000km. It now reads over 220,000km, and it is still running.

There was a time I complained about it endlessly about the problems from one end to the other. But over the years, each issue forced me to deal with it head on and somewhere in that process I found a kind of peace with the uncertainty that comes with driving an older car. For someone freelancing without a stable monthly income, a car loan was never a realistic option and learning to appreciate what I had became less of a choice and more of a necessity.

No regrets. This car has been present for more memories than I can count and it has sheltered me through countless client meetings and shoots when the weather had other plans.

During a better stretch of the business, I gave it a fresh coat of Nardo Grey paint and replaced a number of critical components - the arms, the engine bay, the parts that matter. It carries a great deal of sentimental weight now, and I would not trade that for anything.