I love you. Ken's Visit

 Playing Host to Ken Brady

Everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong on one of the most important nights of my life. 

Image:Bangsar-babe

I sent a courtesy email the night before to ascertain dinner at 8 and to wish him and his partner a safe & pleasant trip. He replied as early as 7am the next morning to advise of a flight delay from Bangkok landing in KL at 5pm instead of 2. My proposed dinner time was still doable. I calculated. 

So I went about my day with scheduled meetings with Fai and Al, an intern from Kuantan. Our meeting went fabulously well but there were further delays in Ken's flight into KL. There was a second departure delay that had them sitting in their plane on the tarmac at Suvarnabhumi for another 90 minutes while airline officials off-loaded luggage for no-show passengers on a full flight. They finally landed at KLIA at 7. I was still at the office and made a mental note to leave at 8 to fetch Ken from his hotel in Bukit Bintang. With traffic coming into KL from KLIA on a Friday evening, I anticipated his arrival at the hotel at 9 at the earliest. 

I was wrong. Just minutes before 8, he texted they had arrived and checked-in at their hotel. Horrors. I was still at the office. We rushed out the door into Friday night traffic going into the city center. It was a nightmare when in our haste we missed a right turn into Raja Chulan leading to Bukit Bintang. 

We finally made it to the hotel lobby at 8.41pm. Our dinner guests looked very relaxed and seemingly unaffected by the day's delays. Ken looks as dashing as ever as does Mac. We quickly piled into Fai's car inching up Bukit Bintang, one of the busiest roads in town, slowly and surely making our way to nearby Hakka Restaurant (since 1956). All is well I thought, we can still make our dinner reservation. But no, we were chased and stopped by a Police patrol car, told to wait in the car while a summons was slowly handwritten and issued to Fai for running a red light. What red light??

As we reached our iconic restaurant, thank god they were still open and kept my reservation, I was silently contemplating what else could possibly go wrong with the night. 

We got to our table, sat down and ordered wine, food and crabs! Chilli crabs are what we came here for. 
They're Mac's favourite. 

I settled down, sat back to look at my guests like prized catches, to fully appreciate and acknowledge their presence and let out a satisfying sigh. Then I looked around the old establishment and recalled the last time I sat here was in late 2018. I was having dinner with four lovely and very powerful ladies.

One was an investment banker, another an heiress to an international Swiss watch brand with her teenage daughter and the fourth, an heiress of a property-based conglomerate. Yes I felt like a sausage in a basket of rich muffins. To be precise, three muffins and a cupcake. 

I snapped out of my stupor when the waitress slapped a menu on the table and cried; "No more crab."

What the..??!! I began exclaiming when I realised I found the answer to the question I was earlier contemplating. No crabs. I buried my head in my hands resigning to hopefully the last thing to go wrong tonight. My head went limp in my hands partly from embarrassment from the misfortunes suffered tonight and partly from utter disbelief. I finally showed my face to my guests and apologised painfully. My gracious guests took it in their stride for the second time that night. It was a sobering night. Even the delicious New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc didn't help much. 

But we had a fabulous time. 

Ken was his usual talkative self enlightening us with some of his travel stories in Egypt with Michael Ball. He kept remarking at how he remembered eating at this restaurant many years ago. Mac was grinning affably enjoying his maiden trip to KL while Fai paid full attention to Ken having sat down next to him on my left. I was feeling pleased in the moment enraptured in the fact that I am once again in the presence of my mentor who I respect and admire and who has played a large part in shaping my professional life. This time I was hosting him in my city. A city Ken has grown fond of and familiar with. We ate the fish and prawn dishes, drank wine and talked till closing time. Then we drove Ken & Mac back to the Marriot way past his 10pm moratorium hugging and leaving them happy and tired from their day of travels and delays. 

We left feeling a huge sense of relief everything went fabulously well. Including the misadventures. In fact we agreed that they made the milestone event more memorable.

Later that night as I sat on my balcony, reflecting my friend Ken, I realised he was the only 'Big Brother' father figure person left in my life. My mentor who has known and nurtured me for over 30 years. 

We first met and instantly connected at the poolside of a beach resort in Kuantan where I had my first taste of training conducted by 'the' Ken Brady, one of the founders of Ogilvy's Magic Lantern training series worldwide. It was the first of many to come, starting the steep curve of lessons turning me, a scruffy Malaysian Chinese hooligan into a gentleman, better an advertising executive in the mould of Michael Ball leading directly to David Ogilvy, the father of Advertising. 

I try to make regular visits to Bangkok to see Ken. I remember my last visit right after my divorce just before the Covid lockdowns. I needed to tell someone about my life at that point. I had no one to tell to except Ken. He mirrored how I felt. He felt heartbroken, mumbled some comforting words and sat with me in silence. I suppose it was at that point that my healing started. 

We have kept in constant touch via email. Ken would send a barrage of daily emails mainly curating tid bits of news, images, videos, jokes, or anything interesting worth sharing. His daily missives would occasionally be peppered with detailed and thoughtful travel posts after he returns from his travels from  anywhere. Ken travels at the frequency of migratory birds. Throughout the years he has I'm sure amassed quite a following from his travels to share his daily emails far and wide. In fact I would say this advertising guru started email marketing and community building decades ago. 

Image:KenBrady

Speaking of community, no visit of Ken is complete without fraternising with the guys. These would be the remaining male colleagues left from The Ball Partnership & Spider days, the nineteen eighties and nineties They all showed up in full force. All four of them. So the seven of us had another round of seafood dinner (with crabs) hosted by Ken at Hokkaido Seafood restaurant in the fringes of the city on Saturday night.

All of us still had our teeth to enjoy the sumptuous crab dinner and our memories to reap the dividends of comradeship invested over 30 years ago. It was a happy reunion sans our fearless leader TL whose legacy we have become. He passed in 2009 and it was at his funeral we all were together last and according to Ken, it was at a dinner we had on that night that he had never laughed so much since. 

Well, seeing what Ken has accomplished in his lifetime, in a vocation that brought us together, it is no wonder he is having the last laugh. It was a life well lived as is still being lived. Very richly. 

Now that is an incredible story for another day.

First I'll have to track him down, sit him down to tell me history.