David, Patrick and Jahabar

Three fellas that I met at The Banker's Draught last August when I was down in Kuala Lumpur for the Malaysia Chess Festival:

The first was David Wu, whom I had first met several years ago in Penang when my old schoolmate, Kee Thuan Chye, was launching one of his Bullshit books at the Loke Thye Kee building in Penang Road. After the launch of the book, we had all adjourned to a food court in Weld Quay for a few drinks. Interestingly enough, I had asked David then whether or not he was related to a certain Wu Lien-teh and he said "no."

Well, as many of you would know, David walked all the way from KL to Kelantan in 2015 to raise money for the flood victims of Kelantan and he managed to raise enough to re-build a house for a Malay lady there. In 2016, he went on a solo bicycling trip to China to rediscover his ancestral roots.

Then in a mad rush of adrenaline, he had taken off again on an ambitious bicycling journey around the globe with another chap, this time to try raise funds for childhood cancer. He's trying to raise RM5 million in conjunction with the National Cancer Society Malaysia and he's only asking the public to donate at least RM1 to the effort. In case you want to do your part, you can bank in your donation to Public Bank Berhad account no: 3988587622 in the name of The National Cancer Society of Malaysia.

The second was Patrick Teoh. You should know this niamah guy. His voice was the voice of radio for decades. On Radio Malaysia's Fantastic Facts and Fancies in the 1960s to the Breakfast Show with Yasmin Yusof in the 1990s, I think, and he is still on the Bfm radio station today with his Pick of the Pops on Saturday afternoons.

We had first gotten in touch in the mid-1990s when my pals and I formed an Internet emailing list which Patrick came on board much later. At that time, I had asked him about the word "seque" and he said it meant music flowing continuously from one song to another without stopping. And he said that it's pronounced as "seg-wei".

So when I met him again recently and reminding him about his email, I dropped a clanger by mispronouncing the word and having him correct me. Anyway, Patrick in person sounds exactly as Patrick over the airwaves.

The third was Jahabar Sadiq. First time that I had met this guy but not the first time that I had heard about him, of course. He was the editor of The Malaysian Insider news portal until it was blocked by the Malaysian government in early 2016 and this caused the website to close down permanently a month later.

But then you really can't put a good man down, can you?  He later found someone to back him up and in early 2017, Jahabar was back as the editor of another news portal called The Malaysian Insight. That's how I introduced him to my daughter on that evening at The Banker's Draught: the editor of The Malaysian Insight? "Are you sure?" he tried to cast doubt on my introduction. Of course! How could I be wrong?