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.

I love you. One Fine Saturday afternoon.

 One Fine Saturday in September. 

I had just finished a short but productive meeting with my Brunei friend and distributor at The Westin in Bukit Bintang. As I made my way back, I walked the short distance fr the hotel to the MRT station positioned right in front of Lot 10. This iconic old-school mall also houses many interesting stores as well as Isetan- my favourite Japanese dept store chain with unrivalled customer service. 

I took the escalators up and after two floors decided to browse along one while heading towards Isetan. 

A traditional red Batek sarong draped over a blue painted fence caught my eye. It was a painting hanging on the wall of an art gallery. The watercolour artist Chang Fee Ming came to mind, only he can accurately capture intricate details of traditional Batek sarongs and rural scenes so beautifully. It was rare to see real artworks by the famous Terengganu native that I simply had to see this one up close. After all most of his works are locked up in private collection and are quickly sold at rightly expensive prices. 

“A Blessing Morning” ~ Ting Cho Chien
Acrylic on canvas 152.6cm x 91.5cm

I was wrong. The artist is Ting Cho Chien, 52 born in Miri, Sarawak. His paintings in acrylic, are very competently executed displaying deftness of subject in fine detail. This is his 4th solo exhibition and it is titled “ Wish On The Same Big Sky” which showcases work between 2020-2022 - The pandemic years. Hence the title, fashioned after lyrics in the song “Somewhere out there” featured in the non-Disney animated musical- An American Tail. I spent some time admiring the art pieces from the exhibition as well as works of other artists on display including a few pieces by Eng Tay, a New York trained Malaysian artist whose figurative abstract paintings center on love and family. 

"Happy Hours" ~ Eng Tay, Oil on canvas 30cm x 40cm

"Precious Time"~ Eng Tay, Oil on canvas 24cm x 24cm.

'Cheerfulness' ~ Yap Chin Hoe, mixed on canvas 20cm x20cm.

Having satiated my soul, I made my way to the upper floors of Isetan where they have authentic Japanese merchandise, crafts and curios on display. Although the offerings were getting less and less over the pandemic years, this experimental, experiential concept store, a first outside of Japan, is a delight to explore. I browsed for a few minutes and managed to pick a couple of fine porcelain rice bowls for my collection and was very well served by an attentive sales assistant named Nur. I thanked her and bid her goodbye as I took the carefully wrapped bowls and escalators down to the ground floor and exited the mall’s main entrance a few steps opposite the MRT station. 

This three-tiered underground station has one level for the concourse & ticketing counters, one level down for the south Kajang bound trains and one more level down for north Kwasa Damansara bound trains. This is probably the only station with such a unique configuration. 

I caught the north bound Kwasa Damansara train that arrived promptly together with a throng of other passengers. Fellow Malaysians of various race, age, and fashion sense, spend their Saturday afternoon with loved ones embarking and disembarking KL's still spanking new MRT coaches. It was a pleasant sight to behold and to be apart of as families, youngsters, strangers, most standing, some sitting, mingle and mix in the casual commute with deference and respect for each other. The children travelling in prams or on tiny feet were especially endearing to watch and interact with. Their genuine smiles seem to be permanently etched on their faces. Even the ones with little masks on. 

After only two stops, I disembarked at Pasar Seni station to catch my connecting LRT to Bangsar. The lift took us up from the underground MRT to the adjoining LRT concourse and the escalator to the above ground platform. As I gently stepped off the escalator to the open air platform, I saw her for the first time- A Fairy, resplendent in costume of olden-day China. Almost exactly like the floating fairy images on mooncake boxes and firecracker packets. 

She was standing near the start of the platform in front of a pillar and a huge standing fan. Her hair was neatly tied up in a bunch like a headgear, adorned with pink and purple faux roses at the back. Her face, hidden by a mandatory white face mask made her all the more mysterious. Her almond shaped eyes peered at me from under finely shaped high eyebrows, two small pieces of white jade stones, one larger than the other, are embedded in the middle of her forehead. From her ears, headphone cables flow down her robe attached to her phone in her right hand. On her left hand, she holds the handle of a round silk fan embroidered with a pair of pandas playing under the branches of a cherry blossom. Her peach coloured silk overcoat was trimmed with a light olive band lightly embroidered with flowers, running around the lapels on her shoulders down to her front edges falling well below her knees. A red blouse and a long sweeping white pleated skirt, that hides a pair of silk embroidered slippers with upturned tips, complete the mystical creature's ensemble. From a distance she looked like a floating apparition.

Having never seen a fairy in person before, I was dumbfounded to say the least. What would you have done? I kept looking at her, discreetly taking pictures from my mobile. She was indeed very meticulously costumed and I was fascinated. I looked around to see if there was a camera crew somewhere filming her. There wasn't. The people standing around her were pretty nonchalant about her 'dress'. No one tried to chat her up nor anyone was conscious about distancing themselves from this 'fairy'. I simply stood observing her and the people around her and I surmised that commuters these days are unperturbed with oddity and have respect for each others individuality and creativity.

'The Fairy's Back' ~ Pineforest.

The train arrived and she effortlessly 'floated' from the platform into the coach as the doors slid open. The people, disembarking or embarking seem to part like water from a ship's hull when she boarded. I followed close behind into the first coach filling to standing room only.

The fairy was hanging nonchalantly onto a hand strap while the train lurched forward, after two stops arrived at my destination- Bangsar station. I squeezed past the thick facade of bodies to disembark, as I brushed past the fairy before stepping on the platform, I told her exactly how she looked. 

She let out a startled "Oh..! Thank you" as I walked out of her life down to my favourite Indian restaurant in Bangsar Utama for my thosai and teh tarek done to my specifications by Mani and his crew. It was a fine Saturday indeed.

"Thosai with 2-chutneys, fish curry, dhal curry" by Chief cook Mani.

I wish you fine days ahead.

P/s. Have you seen a fairy up front before?