Yong-Long Lai

Recently I was traveled to Malaysia to celebrate my grandfather’s 80th birthday. What a wonderful experience, a priceless moment to see how much each of the family members have grown. Its amazing how much talents and skills you could actually have within your own family unit! The diverse industry and experience that each of them bring along with them, just imagine the wealth of knowledge & experience shared between the family members… how much success could a person possibly achieve in their lifetime!

Anyways, while I was back I always like to have a chat with my grandparents, but since i’m a bit smarter now i decided not to ask the dumb questions of “how are you? how are things? etc.”. I decided to ask a better question… since it was my grandfather’s 80th birthday coming, I decided to ask him if he could tell me his story…. WOW! I can’t believe I have never asked him this before. I also wished my Mandarin (Chinese) was better… I think 10% of the information was lost in translation!

• Story of growing up in China
• Moving from China to Malaysia
• The many deaths that was suffered in his family (and how lucky he was to survive)
• Escaping into the jungles during the world war
• Surviving in the jungles and remaining undetected
• Re-emerging from the jungles and rebuilding his life
• His parent’s deaths and taking care of his siblings by himself with minimal support at a very young age
• Struggling through poverty and building enough wealth to send as many of his children through education
• His career and business ventures
• The success of his children (my dad and his brothers and sisters)

As I listen to that story, I sat there reflecting on how lucky am I to be here! If any one of the millions of misfortunes were to have happened to him, his parents, his grandparents, my parents etc. I would not be here right now posting this! Just wanted to share this with you and hopefully you get an opportunity to ask your grandparents about their stories and reflect on how lucky you already are to be able to listen to their stories! Most importantly share them with your kids and grandkids (whenever they come)

This is why I think we have to make the most of our precious time on this Earth and make a difference to the people around yourself in whatever way you can! It’s just too amazing how everybody got to where we are now and its just sad to let anybody who wants to make a difference get left behind!

Here is a cool presentation that my cousin created with the help of many members of my family for my grandfather’s 80th birthday. Its amazing the skills & talents you family have… Hope you enjoy!