It's a cloudless Friday afternoon, 16 June 2006, when I saw Obama, in Evanston, outside Chicago. He didn't notice me, of course, but there he was, in the flesh, walking a mere 20 metres out on his way up the stage at Ryan Field to address graduates and parents at Northwestern University's 148th commencement. My eldest was in the graduating Class of 2006. As fate would have it, my camera ran out of batteries, so I couldn't snap anything to prove this to you.
Obama needs no batteries because he's a born orator. He speaks from the heart. And he must've picked up some skills during his early schooldays in Jakarta, where almost everyone speaks and double-speaks. His speech was short and straight, but it's hard not to be inspired:
"Challenge yourself. Take some risks in your life. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfullfilled"
A pretty aphorism and a handsome excuse for driving a preve and not a porsche. Man, this guy is smooth. I'd barely heard of Barack Obama then, but I was already impressed. He'd just been elected a US senator with some 65% vote. What struck me wasn't so much the "challenge yourself" mantra. I'd heard it repeated to death in all my thirty years at Petronas. It's the "poverty of ambition" and "asks too little of yourself" bit that I fell for. Not its substance, but the elegance. Pure Chicago and massively original. A lot fresher than the dreaded and Balotelli-ugly "deliverables" and "stretch targets".
True to his every word, Obama went on to become US President, not once, but twice, earning a miserly $400K a year. This is, let's face it, the ultimate "walk the talk". He'd have earned more than that had he joined Petronas and become a vice president. But that would leave him unfulfilled.
Now back to my eldest. As a graduating student, he's seated close to the stage and had a plum view of Obama, but I wasn't sure whether he's listening to him at all. He's probably too busy pinching himself just to be doubly sure that this graduation gig wasn't a dream or another Nigerian hoax. The ghost of the past four years was still looming large. Northwestern, decidedly, isn't Universiti Malaysia Kelantan.
Obama didn't join Petronas, you know that. But my eldest did, if you want to know.
True to his every word, Obama went on to become US President, not once, but twice, earning a miserly $400K a year. This is, let's face it, the ultimate "walk the talk". He'd have earned more than that had he joined Petronas and become a vice president. But that would leave him unfulfilled.
Now back to my eldest. As a graduating student, he's seated close to the stage and had a plum view of Obama, but I wasn't sure whether he's listening to him at all. He's probably too busy pinching himself just to be doubly sure that this graduation gig wasn't a dream or another Nigerian hoax. The ghost of the past four years was still looming large. Northwestern, decidedly, isn't Universiti Malaysia Kelantan.
Obama didn't join Petronas, you know that. But my eldest did, if you want to know.
