I Asked For Prosperity, God Sent Me to Cyberjaya

You know you have arrived in the heart of Cyberjaya when it feels as if you have entered a foreign country, waited forever for the traffic lights to turn green and see office workers are all in jeans and T-shirts. Nothing is as it appears. There are no yellow courier service trucks making their runs out of the DHL building. Inside the Shell building there is a petrol pump, but the Shell staff members do not refuel there. No, you can’t do any banking at the HSBC building. As you enter the MSC Innovation Centre, innovation seems to have stopped at the gate where the attendant kicks the orange cone to the front of your car, prompting you to stop and gives you a parking ticket before removing the cone to let you in. Lunch time crowd at the Street Mall is more multinational than Malaysian. Café Le Frog at Ericsson building serves no frog meat, but only good food. No one believed that I almost bumped into Michael Schumacher at Cyberview Lodge. But that’s OK, because these are the very reasons I have come to love Cyberjaya.

I must say that after God created the rest of world, He saved the best for Malaysia’s first intelligent city, Cyberjaya. But its true beauty is still hidden. From Google Earth, Cyberjaya is a large mass of land under construction. I guess that satellite picture was taken the year when I came to Cyberjaya in 2001 to start my new career with a start-up company. Today, Cyberjaya is a vast contradiction. Setia Haruman’s premium real estate lining the magnificent Putrajaya lake provides a sneak preview of Cyberjaya’s true beauty to come. That lakeside is my stretch of heaven on Earth and my all time favorite jogging track - the awesome panorama, the therapeutic tranquility and the cooling breeze keeps me running for hours. The start up company that I have served since has grown good for listing in such a short period, and if it does get listed, its CEO and owners will certainly join the many who have gained from the innovative opportunities in Cyberjaya. Ten years before, I could not even imagine so many MNCs locating in Cyberjaya, providing so many employment opportunities and so many start-ups thriving.

Cyberjaya is truly a city borne out of creative innovation and innovation is what makes it prosper. Take for example the job that I am doing with public key infrastructure (PKI). PKI is cryptic stuff that belongs to the domain of cryptographers. Some enterprising folks with innovative ideas decided to create value with it, and Cyberjaya provided that fertile environment. Today, PKI secures our Internet transactions such as Internet banking transactions and assures the millions who rely on the security and trustworthiness of the Internet to do business. And ten years ago, I could not make a decent presentation about PKI as I could not fully decrypt how it works and its business value. But again that’s OK because enduring the growing pains of a new career and those of a new city has its rewards.