Petronas Twin-Tower (PeTT) construction took 7 years (1992-98) to be completed and it costs USD1.2 billion or about MYR 3.1 billion (if I can remember correctly, that time USD1 = MYR2.60).
If you’ve been living ‘long enough’, you must still remember how it’s been criticised for its super-whopping cost that time. Asian financial crisis 97/98 & Anwar Ibrahim been fired for his opposition to government’s “bail-out” program can only spiced up the issue.
Ten years down the road after PeTT was officially launched in 1999, have we ever thought what KL or Malaysia would be without KLCC? Probably Jln Tunku Abdul Rahman, Jln Pudu or Dataran Merdeka (and maybe Lorong Hj Taib?) will be the only icon you can be proud of to your overseas colleague; esp. if you were studying or living in other countries.
Ever since Malaysia (country of nowhere in 80’s) conquer the first spot in the title of “The Highest Building on the Planet” from 1998-2004, the world start to acknowledge our existence.
Since then, there are various projects surrounding KLCC worth at least RM2-3 billion currently took place with more are coming; which include condominiums, hotels & office buildings. Even we consider all the condominiums are so expensive, the prices were relatively cheap compared to other region with the same ‘kind of environment’.
These developments are enough to keep our local developers busy, cement & steel producers to keep on running and other related companies to profit from such golden opportunity. If you worked or invested in one of these companies, you must understand what I mean.
If these projects are all completed, I guess more foreigners will fly to Malaysia enjoying our facility & culture. which I believe had already been tripled for the past 10 years (excluding foreign labours that came in for jobs, students that came in to study in our private/ local universities & some corporate visits to seal their business deal because even without KLCC they’ll still come over).
More importantly, Petronas, being the owner of the whole idea, has been known as one of the preferred partner in venturing new oil & gas resources despite the fact that it’s still ‘young’ in this business.
Imagine this, Petronas gets more profits from overseas projects, government gets higher dividends & taxes for domestic expenditures & civil servants then able to bank in better annual increment!
In case this sounds not good enough, our next generation set to benefit from the opportunity to work with our ‘own’ company in many years to come (even if all of our resources depleted).
All of these, not even 10% of the known benefits if we consider the spill over effect too!
Going back to the initial questions, we probably don’t get all those benefits if our ancestors decided to do nothing in the first place; which is normal considering being rejected by ‘significant numbers’ of Malaysians. And mind you, these “rejecters” are not regular people like us, but academician, engineers, economist & even historian!
I guess the decision maker that time had enough courage & determination after accumulating required knowledge & skill.
And these quality traits that we plan to instil in our children right from beginning.
We don’t have Stair Safety Gates like most houses with children do. In fact, we encouraged Hafiy to climb up stairs as soon as he can crawl. For safety reason, we sit behind him instead.
And we don’t pick him up or easily say “Alahai, siannya anak Mommy, dan jangan main situ lagi nanti jatuh lagi” to Hafiy whenever he falls down. Nor have a feeling “I am a bad Mommy” after such incidents. Instead, we just ask him to stand up fast and continue running.
We prefer to teach them how the pain ‘look like’ if they fail than avoiding them from making mistake and also make them think how to reduce/ avoid such pain after feeling it several times themselves than keep on asking us for solution (dokong la, ape lagi).
Teaching someone how to fail is much easier than teaching the same people how to succeed.
Don’t you think so?
Human tend to develop enough courage & determination not to die than to live. Then only we’ll learn new knowledge & skills along the way.
The last thing we want from our kids are for them do nothing only because they don’t know “enough” for something they should but expect someone doing “that thing” for them forever & for free.
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