Death of an icon

Lim Goh Tong is dead. A Malaysian icon, a name synonymous with the very definition of successful entrepreneurship.

Moment of silence as a mark of respect.

The man solely responsible for conceptualizing, creating and actualizing Genting Highlands & the Genting Group. A man who started off penniless, with no education and who was armed only with his wit, business acumen and work ethic. He also must have had a lot of balls.

This is the end of an era, a man who was 90 years old, who went through it all and saw it all, who rubbed shoulders with all the M'sian Prime Ministers, who contributed to our tourism industry, who was there when the Japanese attacked, when the Brits left us to die, when Chin Peng roamed the highlands that Genting was a part of, who rubbed shoulders with the likes of Boon Siew, the founders of numerous local banks, the Kuoks...

Times have changed. Conditions are not the same as they were, not as ripe for creating the modern day equivalent. Entrepreneurs are becoming scarcer and scarcer, as people increasingly opt for 'safe' careers. Will we ever see again another such person?

Personally, I am just grateful that he created Genting, for whatever it may be now, however the weather may be, back in those days as a little boy, going there with the family was a wonderful and cold experience that created many fond and long lasting familial bonds and memories.

Reading about his body lying in the coffin while his friends and family went to pay their last respects just served to drive into me human mortality. For once there was Lim Goh Tong, the man, the spark, and people shook his hand, touched him, talked to him, heard his voice, played mahjong with him, and now there he lies in that coffin. Forever extinguished, and what seemed so real only yesterday, when one could hear the voice and watch the limbs move on their own accord, is now something so... unreal. I can't even begin to understand what I am trying to say, hence I am not doing a v good job saying it. Just like that a human, a man, is now a corpse. Look to your left and right. See that person there? One moment, you hear the person moving around, speaking, coughing, typing, doing things of their own accord.

Stand up, stab the person's throat 10 times with a sharp knife, and stand back and watch. The person is now dead. Where once there was human life, there is now a corpse.

On an aside, ever wondered about how come the normal insignificant things in life such as hair, nails, tongue, become suddenly very spooky in death? E.g. "When they opened the coffin after 10 years, they found the hair & nails had grown longer." Or. .."..when they fished her out of the river, her tongue was hanging out, and had become twice as long and twice as thick".