Several of my classmates from my Chinese school in 1940 were from a lovely Chaozhou family. They had three or four sisters, and their father was a ki… - Robert Kuok

You're going to be the leader of a nation, and you have three sons, Hussein. The first-born is Malay, the second-born is Chinese, the third-born is Indian. What we have been witnessing is that the first-born is more favoured than the second or third. Hussein, if you do that in a family, your eldest son will grow up very spoiled. As soon as he attains manhood, he will be in the nightclubs every night because Papa is doting on him. The second and third sons, feeling the discrimination, will grow up hard as nails. Year by year they will become harder and harder, like steel, so that in the end they are going to succeed even more and the eldest will fail even more.

He would start a business, lose money, close it and start another. That would make money for a while, and then the cycle would repeat.

Father was almost always short of cash. He borrowed money to start new businesses, only to see them fail. The tide of the Depression was against him, but he didn't realize it. He did not have enough education to sense that the tide was coming to drown him, and that he should take evasive measures and run to high ground like some of the wealthier, better-educated businessmen of Singapore, Penang and Malacca.