05: Starbucks Live and Inspire Series featured Anas Zubedy {Watch Video}

Title: Recolouring Malaysia
Date: 13 May 2010
Time: 8:00pm
Venue: Starbucks, Level 2, Bangsar Village 2, Kuala Lumpur

We’re still rocking Season II! We have Anas Zubedy back again this season by popular demand!

So who is Anas Zubedy?

ANAS ZUBEDY is an Entrepreneur. He was born in Penang, speaks English, Malay, Hokkien & some Tamil. Anas is the Managing Director at Zubedy (M) Sdn Bhd, a consultancy firm focusing on human development, management and skills training workshops.

Anas is known for his initiatives of placing full page advertisements in The Star bearing strong messages on unity. When asked how much did he spend on such advertisements, he says it is about RM1.5 million.

**His muhibbah advertisements have become a quirky staple in newspapers every festival.

WHAT prompts a company to splurge for eight consecutive years (and counting) on advertisements commemorating a day that is barely acknowledged publicly?

Malaysia Day (on Sept 16) might be in the pages of history books but it has yet to claim its place in the hearts of Malaysians.  But Anas Zubedy does it for unity.

“I feel strongly about promoting the message of unity because I feel it is my calling. Everybody has their calling; mine is to unite people,” he says. He explains that “Malaysia gave me the opportunity to be a universal child” and that while “other people have to travel to experience different races and cultures, we have it right in front of us, but we are not reaping it.”

Anas, who is a boyish-looking 44, has dreamt of uniting people ever since he was young and he credits this to his upbringing and early exposure to different cultures.

The son of a “simple shop assistant” and a housewife, Anas grew up in Penang and was no stranger to racial and cultural diversity.

In his younger days, he befriended a Eurasian family. At age 10, his best friend was an Indian boy and in lower secondary school he hung out at a Punjabi friend’s place in the evenings. Anas was a favourite with the older folks who fawned over him during Chinese New Year because he was a non-Chinese kid who could chatter fluently in a Chinese dialect.

“I celebrated Chinese New Year and used to do what the other Chinese kids would do. I tended to get more ang pow (red packets) than them because I could speak Hokkien. I used to gamble, too, you know, until I decided at age 10 that it wasn’t a good thing to do,” he laughs.

Fun times, indeed, for a young Malay boy but it was not all plain sailing as not everyone was equally colour-blind.

He found that there were times when the kids would try to exclude him from their games because he was not “one of them”. But, at the same time, there were many who declared that they would not play if he was not allowed to join in.

“So, I learned from a very young age, while I was marginalised – just a little bit – that there are no bad races, but only bad people,” he says.**

Excerpt from The Star Newspaper written by Rouwen Lin, September 28, 2008

For more information on Recoloring Malaysia Campaign

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