Offline Timeline & Memorable Checkpoints.

I was born in this hospital and grew up in Farlim Town, Penang Island. I should have had an older brother, but he passed away before birth, so I become the eldest son in my family.

Growing up in an ordinary small family without emotional guidance and self awareness, I expressed my frustrations on my bedroom wall as a child due to limited outlets. My mother enrolled me in drawing classes, which led me to develop my artistic skills and sense early on in life.

I began primary school with early practice for drawing and painting which helped me excel in art subjects and make friends despite occasional bullying. I often used my skills to turn situations around positively and enjoyed creating and sharing comics with my classmates.

The internet is increasingly prevalent in households, and I began playing Maple Story, which inspires adventure and exploration. I'm also grateful to be learning basic Robotics and Web Development through the Dynabook program. My exposure to the digital world began with my school and my parent's computer for their teaching work.

During high school, I was separated from my friends in form 2 and had to adapt to a new environment. I learned to make friends by finding common topics to discuss in class and also supported peers who were struggling with their studies. Over the years, I've realized that I prefer not to be in the top tier. In form 4, I intentionally chose the fourth class (4S4) to avoid first class. Additionally, I have a dislike for biology.

I found YouTube and began teaching myself to create Maple Story 2D animations. I made friends globally online and explored various digital art tools like NeoPaint and GIMP. I also started designing random signatures for forum users, spending more time online after my offline study and revision.

Thanks to a government school event, it requires me to borrow my uncle's camera to document it as school graduation magazine committee, leading to the realization that a camera is like a paintbrush. With my mother's financial assistance, I have my first camera - Sony A35 and I explored Facebook to share my photos and discovered DeviantArt to learn Photoshop independently.

I began to take photography more seriously, often capturing images at sunrise on Penang Hill on the weekend. Whenever I return to Alor Setar during school holiday, I ride my grandfather's motorbike to photograph the paddy field. My first accomplishment was winning a local Chinese newspaper contest, which inspired me to enter more contests and enhance my skills.

I met an online friend, Kevin Pinga from Perlis, who motivated me to use my SPM results to pursue creative studies. Despite disliking science, I focused on doing well and eventually quit a factory job after three days of working to dedicate my efforts to building my art portfolio.

The Star Education Fund and MMU Scholarship (Foundation in Creative Multimedia Leading to Animation & Visual Effects Degree) allowed me to leave Penang Island for Kuala Lumpur and later Selangor. This experience opened my eyes to a larger world, enabling me to connect with friends from various races, countries and backgrounds through the MMU platform.

During each semester break, I prefer not to return home and instead visit my friends' hometowns for photography and creative projects. Since most of my MMU friends are from the Southern region, I have had the chance to explore Johor and frequently take buses from TBS.

After two years of trying, I received an international call from London informing me that I won the Sony World Photography Awards competition. I will take my first flight to a destination so far away. My initial motivation was to get the latest full frame camera, but the trip also gave me a glimpse of other countries and different perspectives, despite my short stay of just a few days.

This year, I participated in numerous contests and achieved many victories, earning a significant amount of money. Without personal transportation, I decided to use some of my earnings to buy my first motorcycle, a Yamaha FZ150i. I watched Youtube Video and practiced for hours in MMU's large car park before riding on public roads in Cyberjaya. This motorcycle allows me to discover more places in Selangor and connect with others who have similar interests.

My parents brought a used Proton Saga Iswara for me since I needed a car to transport my friends and materials for my final year project. After a long break from driving, I practiced in the spacious MMU car park before going on public roads. This car allows me to discover more places without the concern of weather or rain.

My initial work experience was with Illusion Fecit, where I met the boss at a school event. I opted for a small company to learn comprehensively. The three-month internship revealed my potential and significantly benefited my final year project.

I launched my first photography business and began freelancing as I was nearing graduation. I chose to forgo a sponsored master's degree to take risks and pursue my own venture. This year, I also fell in love but financial concerns and my own unresolved issues affected my relationship.

When an enquiry came in from Kota Tinggi Rainforest Resort, I made the call to take it on at RM900 — a price I set deliberately low out of a mix of desperation and determination to land the deal. It was my first ever property shoot, and the fact that I could channel my passion and skills into something that actually paid felt significant in a way that went beyond the amount.

It was also my first time driving out of Selangor all the way to Johor — another first layered on top of another. I am grateful to my housemate for coming along to assist on both the shoot and the trip. That project, modest as the fee was, marked the beginning of something that would eventually become a core part of how I made a living.

I am grateful to the LinkedIn platform for connecting me with the organizer, leading to an invitation that allowed me to travel to Madrid and share my personal creative journey on an international stage.

This trip came together through a friendship that started online, someone I had connected with through YouTube and MapleStory who made his way to Vietnam. It was my first time in the country, and we decided to take on the Ha Giang Loop by motorcycle together. He had been teaching English there and freelancing, hearing about that path firsthand opened my eyes to possibilities I had not seriously considered before.

None of it would have been possible without his guidance and another local friend he had made along the way - their knowledge of the terrain and the region made the difference.

The trip also taught me something about travel compatibility. He is someone who leans into adventure without hesitation; I tend toward caution and careful consideration. That contrast, rather than creating friction, ended up balancing things out rather well. There were stretches of the ride where compromise was necessary, and navigating that together was its own kind of experience.

My friend has always admired my photography since we met in the early days of MMU. He epitomizes the word hustler, coming from the same roots and having the same beginnings. This of course led to a healthy rivalry between us that drove us both to improve in a constant battle of ambition and skill.

We started our journeys at MMU together, but he soon made the choice to transfer to UTAR for greater opportunities and after completing his studies, he moved to Singapore. Singapore did not turn out to be his promised land... a toxic workplace, intractable Singaporean Chinese boss, a problematic Singaporean Chinese landlord, and the insidious kind of stress that accumulates and does not declare itself until it has caused a great deal of damage. He got cancer.

He beat it once. Then it came back.

During the final stretch of his journey, I made it a point to visit him whenever he came to KL for chemotherapy at Pantai Hospital. He would stay at Time Hotel in Kuchai Lama, and we would always end up at a nearby coffee stall — sitting together, talking, the way old friends do. I would listen, and he would share. In those conversations, he passed on a kind of wisdom that only comes from facing something that severe alone and in silence. He became the teacher; I became the student.

The lessons he shared with me in those moments have never left. They are still with me today.

This moment was a key pivotal moment on the road of many milestones on this timeline. It was the younger manager of the motorcycle service workshop I had been going to for years, and he had been the first person to offer me an opportunity to collaborate. He onboarded me as a freelance copywriter, and I got to write product descriptions and articles. It was a great fit as the business was full of motorcycles parts and I was able to express the passion I had for them. I could honestly say I had never experienced something so effortless, at least when compared to any of the other creative jobs I had at the time. Eventually I went from doing a few product descriptions to being in full control of the advertising on their social media and the advertising materials.

With the monthly retainer providing a stable financial foundation, the constant worry of making ends meet lifted enough for me to breathe creatively again. That breathing room led to more self-initiated work, which eventually culminated in winning the Adobe Design Achievement Awards — a recognition that carried real weight beyond the accolade itself. It gave me a legitimate and credible reason to apply for a United States B2 visa, and for the first time in my life, I made it to America.

The trip was everything I had quietly hoped it would be. I got to meet people I had long admired from a distance, and the exposure to the advertising and creative industry at that level taught me things I could not have picked up anywhere else. It was one of those experiences that quietly recalibrates how you see yourself and what you believe is possible.

Just as it felt like my career was finally gaining the momentum I had been building toward after returning from America, Covid arrived and lockdowns followed. The timing was a blow, but I was fortunate to have my monthly retainer holding things together, along with the continued support of a client who had purchased my artwork during the Nando's Art Initiative exhibition. Without both of those lifelines, continuing would not have been an option — moving back home would have been the only path.

I held on, followed the regulations, took the vaccines, and kept going. During this period I also fell victim to a phone call scam — someone posing as a tax officer pressing me about unpaid taxes. A reminder of how vulnerable uncertainty can make a person, and how those moments are often exploited by others.

But beneath the surface, something else was quietly shifting. My mental health had begun to deteriorate in ways I was not yet aware of — a slow, invisible unravelling that would only become clear much later.

During one of my most difficult stretches, a property client came into my life and began providing photography projects with increasing frequency — a relationship that began organically through something as simple as selling a computer part to the manager. As the volume of work grew and higher-end luxury property clients started coming in, I pushed harder without recognising the cost of it. The overwork crept in quietly, and the burnout followed just as silently.

Everything that had been left unresolved — the emotional weight, the financial worries, the accumulated tension of years — reached a breaking point all at once. I could not sleep for two weeks. That was when I finally sought help.

It was also the first moment I became genuinely aware of my own emotions. Before that point, I realise now, I had been completely numb — moving through everything without truly feeling any of it. The collapse was painful, but it was also the beginning of something more honest.

Things gradually began to improve after I started hypnotherapy sessions and committed to the daily practice. Sleep returned, slowly but steadily. With an upgraded client retainer providing more financial room to move, I was able to afford a three-room unit and transform it into a proper working studio. I began inviting team members over regularly and set aside one room for them to stay overnight when needed.

It was also during this period that I became aware of something I had long overlooked — the role that environment plays in the quality of sleep, particularly room temperature in a tropical climate. This was the first place I had lived with air conditioning, and the difference it made was immediate and significant.

The therapy continued alongside all of this, and I kept getting better at doing the harder work — recognising my own emotions, sitting with them, and beginning to understand the roots of patterns that stretched back through my past and into childhood. Progress was not linear, but it was real.

As sleep gradually returned and my environment improved, something else was shifting without my awareness — my weight was climbing steadily in the background. This turned out to be the heaviest I had ever been, and I was completely oblivious to it at the time.

As the lockdown restrictions eased and life began returning to a degree of normalcy, I had already settled comfortably into a sedentary routine. Having trained my team members well enough to handle the client work independently, I had stepped back from the day-to-day execution and rarely needed to jump in myself. The delegation was working as intended — but the stillness it created in my daily life was quietly adding up in ways I had not accounted for.

This was the year we pushed hardest on the ground — determined to bring real visibility to our creative services within the property sector. We attended property fairs, sent out over a hundred cold approach emails, and took every meeting we could get. The hustle was relentless and intentional.
In parallel, the team members I had invested time in guiding and developing were beginning to make their own mark — winning in creative contests in a significant way. That was a quiet source of pride.
It was also during this period that I was at my most creatively active on a personal level. With the client side running steadily month to month under the capable hands of my team, I finally had the headspace and freedom to pour energy back into creating for myself. It felt like a rare alignment of everything working at once.

The habit of ordering food delivery that took hold during the Movement Control Order and lockdowns eventually caught up with me — my weight had climbed into genuinely unhealthy territory. The decision to course correct came with the help of a friend who had done it himself, guiding me through the process of self-directed exercise and managing my own diet.

It was the first time in my life I had truly paid attention to my body — from head to toe, with real intention. Funnily enough, it took reaching that point of excess weight for the realisation to land. I am grateful it came when it did, and not too late. Through consistent effort, I managed to shed more than 17kg.

What that process taught me, beyond the physical change, is that a well-maintained body does not come without deliberate and sustained work. There are no shortcuts, and understanding that has shifted how I approach my health entirely.

The momentum from our cold outreach began to slow. A few promising leads had come through initially, but none of them converted — budgets were tightening across the board, and it became a pattern that showed up with existing clients too, not just new ones. I was genuinely puzzled by it.

Then one day I came across a government-organised contest centred around nature, with a prize of RM10,000. Given that most of my potential client work was on hold, the timing felt right to take a shot at it. It was also the opening I had been waiting for — years of passing through the highway had left me with an unresolved pull toward the Ipoh mountains, a subject I had always wanted to do something meaningful with. A government-backed contest felt like the right context to bring it forward.

That decision led me into the mountains of Ipoh, and from that exploration came several pieces of content that would eventually shape far more than I anticipated.

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I failed to secure the PNB118 project (worth 6 digit amount) and the ipoh mountain solo exhibition did not bring in any profitable sales, plus i was emotionally disturbed by some random scammers online after touching the mountain issue, my finance is going downwards as the time goes by and the thoughts of going back home and facing my past haunts me so I panicked and deviated from my original path of creating art and contents, everything that has been built on layers of leverage since 10 years ago start to collapse naturally as months go by. I thought marketing and attention would solve my problem instantly so I used online tools like X and Xiaohongshu to reach out to influential people on the platforms to "see" me. But my problem was way deeper than this. There was a time when I blame my environment and even my parents for what is happening onto me but as time goes by, I understand that it is inevitable after connecting back the dots. Recalling back my previous year when my sleep quality deteriorate due to financial pressure, this time I prioritise my health first and decided to let go and go home.