This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 17, 2025 - March 23, 2025

Okay everyone, it’s been a good 18 years here (minus one year at Kinibiz circa 2013 to 2014), so maybe it’s time to call it a day at The Edge.

While it’s been a great ride thus far, it’s time to spread the wings and fly to newer, greater heights.

No, you won’t find this writer popping up at another local newspaper writing articles about publicly traded companies, or even light-hearted pieces such as this. He’s leaving the industry and the country for good, and looking for a drastic change.

The aim is to make it big and make it big abroad. By big, I mean really big, as big as the people featured in this paper. You know the type — always smiling, crisply-pressed shirts, flashy suits, very expensive watches, a fleet of huge cars, massive bungalows, beach-side homes, bodyguards, live-in maids and the works basically.

Let me let you in, dear readers, on my grand plan.

In a couple of weeks, there is a junket with a prominent watchmaker to Geneva, Switzerland, after which there will be a launch of one of the company’s watches in Paris. Yes, Paris in France, not Parry’s Corner in Chennai, home of the famous SS Hyderabad Biryani. That’s a tale for another day …

Now, the plan is to escape from the group of journalists in Switzerland, go underground and build a fortune there. While the details of the plan are still sketchy, the fastest way to make a fortune — I am, after all, already 54 years old — is to go into racketeering, smuggling, counterfeit products and whatnot.

You know, like in the Godfather movies, the trilogy from 1972 that was inspired by Mario Puzo’s books. Become a gangster, make a lot of money, make it big. So yes, this writer is going to be Marlon Brando, a rags-to-riches tale, making it big dabbling in the underworld, becoming a Don.

Don Barrock has a nice ring to it, no? Like Don Vito Corleone (born Vito Andolini and played by Brando) said in the movie: “Great men are not born great, they grow great.”

Actually, The Edge pays okay … so, maybe, it will not be a rags-to-riches tale per se, but a comfortable-life-to-riches tale. But a rags-to-riches tale is just so much more compelling and inspiring, isn’t it. So maybe we can embellish the truth a little bit.

For example, we can pretend once I’m famous that I had worked, not as a journalist with The Edge, but with the company that did the printing of The Edge every Thursday and Friday. People would remember me as the guy wearing a singlet and jeans, with ink stains all over, deep-set eyes, a cold stare and a brutal demeanour, with great prowess in the boxing ring. “The left of iron, the right of steel, if the left doesn’t get you, the right will,” they’d say about Don Barrock. (Chewah!!!)

Also, maybe the people doing graphics at The Edge can help recreate the photos of me in my “poorer” days — do some touch-ups here and there, remove the (not so slight) belly fat, add stubble for a 5 o’clock shadow effect, increase the V-taper, elongate my neck, remove the bald spot, and so on.

And then, of course, there would be a need to write a book of one’s life’s journey, to inspire future generations. There are already several such books out there: Against All Odds: The Making of a Billionaire by the late Tan Sri Loy Hean Heong of MBF fame; Never Say I Assume! by the late Datuk Tan Chin Nam, founder of the IGB (formerly Ipoh Garden Sdn Bhd) conglomerate; The Tree Whisperer by the late Tan Sri Lee Shin Cheng of IOI Group (previously Industrial Oxygen Inc); My Story by the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong, who founded gaming, theme park and plantation outfit Genting; and, of course, A Driver’s Son by Tan Sri Shamsuddin Abdul Kadir, 94, the founder of the Sapura group.

Actually, come to think of it, a lot of thought has to be put into this plan.

Firstly, Switzerland is a land-locked country, so smuggling will have to rely entirely on the river port Basel, also known as Basle, a city in the northwestern part of the country and located on the Rhine River.

Perhaps since Switzerland is known for watches, my first enterprise could be selling fake watches. Sorry, I mean, “replica” watches — Rollex, Richard Mill or Frank Muller even, comprende?

And from there, branch out to other things. It’s about getting a foothold in the underground and then working your way up.

I shared this plan with a former editor who asked what the missus thought about it, and whether she was okay with such a drastic move. I remember vaguely telling him that Don Corleone seldom let his wife interfere in his decisions and, as the man of the house, she just meekly followed his instructions.

A few days later …

A massive headache. I hope The Edge’s insurance can settle this hospital bill, God knows how long I’ve been here. A mental note: must buy Ni Hsin Group Bhd’s stock. Their frying pans are durable and much harder than the human head ...

Thank goodness the flight back from Paris is not at some ungodly hour.

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