Kicking off the New Year - Recent trip to KL

Gong hei fatt choi! 

Happy Chinese New Year, Year of the Rabbit!

On Australia Day we left for a very sudden and rushed trip to Malaysia. We were there to support our Malaysian counterpart the Malaysia Australia Business Council (MABC) fundraiser for the Queensland Flood Relief Appeal. The MABC fundraiser was supported by the American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce, the Malaysia Australia New Zealand Association, AirAsia X and the KL Convention Centre.

We were not able to attend the function officially as we had our children with us and at the last minute MABC decided that they did not want children to be present. However, we went to the front desk to pay for our tickets and register our official attendance and to present the MABC with a letter from the Queensland Premier the Hon Anna Bligh MLA, a letter from the Queensland Opposition Leader (and AMBCQ member) John-Paul Langbroek MLA, books on Queensland donated by Julie Attwood MLA, Member for Mt Ommaney, and cricket bats signed by John-Paul Langbroek. The event was a success and raised more than RM170,000 (close to or approximately AUD $60,000).

On Monday the 31st January, Kiong and I were interviewed on Malaysia’s top morning talk show “Malaysia Hari Ini” (“Malaysia Today”) by anchors Ally Iskandar and Abby Fana. We appeared on the programme with our daughter Ilmi (Ilkka was asleep in the pram, it was an early start), and spoke about the Queensland floods, the impact on the community, and the fundraising efforts in Malaysia and in Brisbane. The hosts were particularly interested to hear about how the floods had impacted on children, and we also spoke particularly about the impact on Ilmi (she’s still quite traumatised by the whole thing, especially as her childcare centre went under). The interview was conducted in both Malay and English.


Meeting with Chris and Sharon from MABC secretariat.

We actually had a lot of meetings for this very quick time frame (especially considering it was the lead up to Chinese New Year, and many people were going back to kampung).  It is quite a different experience dragging children along to meetings, but in typical Malaysian style, our Malaysian hosts were very understanding and receptive towards the kids, and by and large, our kids were pretty well behaved considering the number of (for them, boring) meetings they had to attend.  On the whole, Malaysians are so very accepting of children, and the kids had a very positive experience.  It was a welcome change for them too, given the stress and uncertainity of the last few weeks, with their normal routine interrupted by the floods and the scary images from television fresh in their minds. 


With Zul, co-host of MHI on TV3 and GM of Alt Media

Kiong speaking to Terrence Fernandez, deputy editor TheSun


Article in theSun Daily, Malaysia’s top newspaper

We were also interviewed by theSun Daily, Malaysia’s best known independent newspaper and largest circulated daily, again about the Queensland floods, the impact on the community, particularly the Malaysian community, and the AMBCQ’s involvement in the recovery efforts and fundraising efforts. I’ve attached a link to the article – a few of the comments attributed to Kiong are not entirely accurate ( e.g. thousands of Malaysians affected – Kiong estimates the number of Malaysian-born plus their family members who were directly affected to be perhaps in the hundreds ), but it but these things do happen in interviews and reporting when a young journalist is busy jotting things down in her notepad. However, it was invaluable to get high quality publicity for AMBCQ and Queensland in arguably Malaysia’s most read newspaper (see http://203.115.192.117/wednesday/wed_page4.html). We were especially pleased that AirAsia also received a mention, as it is a great airline that has helped generously in many non-profit and charitable activities.