Friday, June 5, 2009

A Teh Tarik Chat With Tan Kee Hian

Seating left to right: Steve Ling, Kee Hian and me. Standing left to right: Philip Hii, Liong and Miaw Ting.
I fixed up with Tan Kee Hian for a teh tarik session this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. at Cafe Palmelia in Premier Hotel. It was a rare opportunity to be accorded with such face-to-face chat with a high-profiled strategic planning consultant.
The informal session gathered together a few bloggers for a frank chat with Kee Hian on issues of concern. To get the words straight from the horse's mouth was certainly exciting.
On the global recovery from the worst-hit financial tsunami, Kee Hian was of the opinion that the splinters of optimistic signals are not concrete enough, but the world economy is stabilising. The West is going to take the lead in the next round of recovery.
The world is undergoing a fundamental change, Kee Hian told us. Gone are the days of high growth. The recovered economy would tread along at a slower pace.
Touching on Najib's bold initiatives since he took the helm of Malaysia, Kee Hian observed that the new PM is pretty committed to bringing about changes to the nation before the next general election. Simple enough, it is change it or lose. " The PM is taking PR seriously and it is a good sign," said Mr. Tan.
Sarawak is trapped in a state of inefficiency in execution. A lot of innovative thinking has to be put in to lift the state up. There have got to be sufficient checks and balances in running the state.
Kee Hian's words of advice to the bloggers and journalists: Put forward more thought-provoking questions to the administrators pertaining to the developments of the state.
The teh tarik session was very enlightening.

2 comments:

Ensurai said...

Well done Tony!!

Wish I was there too with all of you but I was in a car pool homeward bound to Miri.

Anonymous said...

I afraid we cannot take his words too seriously because he is a consultant to Najib. That means, he cannot say anything negative about Najib in public. This is my understanding on how one would do business with Barisan Nasional.