Cheated..Yes! but Financial Lost..Maybe Not

One day in early 1994, a long lost friend, while we reminisced the happy days in our alma mater, proposed to me and 3 other mutual friends to invest in his 'market do talk' project. He has been talking about his commodity market project whenever he has the opportunity during the three hours we have been at the meeting place. It is not that we are not warned that this particular friend has some history of running away with the project money.... We then discussed about the project openly for some 15 minutes, nobody seems eager enough to depart with their money. I told the whole group that I was willing to give RM10,000 as a test, nobody else is to invest without contacting me first. Our newly found friend need a second chance before we wrote him off as incurable.....

Well, sure enough, our newly found friend did not answer my phone calls or SMSs right after the check I gave him was cashed. Somehow he managed to convince another good friend, who was also present in that fateful "meeting" to depart with another RM10,000. Talk about smooth talking. So we lost our newly found friend yet again..

The same month, I got involved with someone who worked in fibreglass boat making industry in Kuala Trengganu. He is a friend of my mechanics and I met him while he was helping my mechanic repairing my car. He has even accompanied my mechanic to my in-laws house in Dungun to repair my 7+ year young second hand car. After asking for his credential from the mechanic, we got on a small project to built fibreglass fish tank. I was keen on this fibreglass project as I believe there will be a niche market in luxury fibreglass catamaran which can be a very profitable venture.

Luxury Fiber-glass Catamaran

The initial investment was only RM7500 and an anticipated profit of about RM500 per unit fish tank. The initial project was for 30 fish tanks, sub contract to us from the main contractor who was contracted to do some 200 fish tanks for LKIM, Trengganu. The main contractor promised to pay directly to me and I will finance the whole project, depositing money to my friend's bank account. The anticipated profit for the project was recalculated to be in the range of RM13,000 to RM14,000, which was agreed to be shared equally between me and my friend.

We started off rather poorly, spending some RM1,500 and 5 days to build the mould for the fish tank and would be in position to build 6 fish tanks (costing at RM900 each). The main contractor would be paying RM7,500 for every 5 fish tanks completed and delivered to be transported to main contractor warehouse. We end up doing two moulds to speed up the process to catch up the agreed dateline.

After a while we made a good enough progress of making 1 boat for 1.5 to 2.0 days depending on weather. There were few small incidents here and there but we were rated good enough by the main contractor, securing us another 20 more fish tanks order.

Somehow, the main contractor got in some tight spot and RM8,000 need to be pumped into the project. I complied by sending in the money but I was not getting good reception from my better half who was not at all happy with the development. I duly conveyed my better half's apprehension to my partner and I got back my RM8,000 about a week later.

When the project was completed, I should be getting back my initial investment of RM7,500 and profit of about RM12,000 , from the agreed 50-50 share of total profit of RM24,000. However, as feared by my better half, my partner went missing from his rented house and as you all would have guessed, he has absconded my initial investment as well as my share of the profit. There was another RM5,000 cost I incurred to have my brother in-law oversee the whole project on my behalf, making my total loss of some RM24,500 from this venture.

And do not eat up your property among yourselves for vanities, nor use it as bait for the judges, with intent that ye may eat up wrongfully and knowingly a little of (other) people’s property - Al-Baqarah :188

The last quarter of the year 2004 saw me and my team on behalf of my company drilling Anding Utara-1 deviated exploration well. The well struck oil in an entirely new reservoir, metasediment or metamorphic basement, flowing about 200 barrel of oil per day.

The well was then sidetracked to penetrate another culmination some 400m from where we found oil and again the new well struck oil in the metasediment reservoir,which on drill-stem-test (DST) flowed about 1000 barrel of oil per day on 18 December 2004, just 8 days before the tsunami struck and ravaged northwestern Sumatra and western shore of Thailand.

Flare on Anding Utara-1 Sidetrack-1

This discovery got me a lump sum increment of RM35,000 and some RM700/month more than my normal increment which I enjoyed from April 2005 till 15 May 2009, the day I officially retired. This monthly increment significantly improved my gratuity and my salary for the 2 year contract job after the official retirement. Alhamdulillah!.

OK, OK, I am a sucker to fall for these investment schemes but like they say "No pain, no gain". You probably had figured out by now that I did not mathematically lost any RM as the loss from two "investments" has been offset by the lump sum increment. I told my other half those money that I had invested will probably need to be paid handsomely to yours truly and to her by those "so-called friends" on the Judgement Day.

Ooohh, Banyoooook tuuuu!!! (Ooohh, that's a lot), If that's is true...Alhamdulillah! was her only response.