Pondering Memory Lane

I was visiting the blogsite of my buddy Acidicsports and one picture posted by him caught my eyes....

Haze in JB

No shit! No, I don't mean the haze shit.. I mean, wasn't this swimming pool of Eden Garden Hotel, Stulang Laut, Johor Bahru?

This hotel cum shopping complex is located at ZON, the only duty free complex in JB. I was the project manager who built it.

The project started construction in 1995 and I was the 4th project manager (My predecessors resigned due to immense pressure). The owner then was Datuk Robert Chuan of Sriwani and Eden Bhd. It was built on a piece of reclaim land - a mangrove swamp and the hotel is sitting on sandfill. The johor state govt owns 30% by way of contribution of the land.

Life then was hell as construction work was onerous and the consulting engineers didn't make it any easier for the contractors. Ranhill was the structural engineering and M&E consultant and the project architect is Akitek Teknikarya.

We completed the project in July 1997, just in the nick of time when the East Asian financial crisis hit Thailand and spiraled down to Malaysia. We were lucky and I believed the property developer were lucky too, as the project was completed by then and the shopping complex was already in business and in operation.

However, Sriwani owners faced financial crunch and was taken over by Tan Sri Rahim and Tan Sri Megat Junid who later changed the name of Sriwani to DFZ Capital Bhd.

Sriwani has 16 duty-free business outlets in Malaysia. Later, in 2005, Naluri bought over the Duty free complex and Sriwani itself. Naluri, (the flagship company of Tajuddin Ramli) was sold by Danaharta to Datuk Seri Adam Sani Abdullah aka George Lim under his flagship company, Atlan Holdings Bhd. Naluri was cash rich at that time when Tajuddin Ramli lost it to Harnaharta.

Coming back to DFZ, the project include the building of a 4-storey shopping complex podium, with 12-floors of hotel rooms and facilities. It also include an Immigration complex with ferry facilities, a custom office and a floating restaurant.

The floating restaurant which cost about RM15 million, was a refurbished ferry from Penang with karaoke and disco facilities. It offers excellent cuisines and was reasonably priced. I just loved the food there.


However, in July 2003, the restaurant ship was destroyed in a gutted fire.

I haven't been there for sometime and I don't think the owner had replaced or reconstructed the floating restaurant. What a sad end to such a beautiful ferry-restaurant.

The rest is history. This project is an icon in my life. It was the springboard for me. When I completed this project, I went back to college to do my master degree and finally my doctorate. After my doctorate, I was made the general manager and later, as COO of various public-listed company. In 2001, I accepted to be a visiting lecturer in the local public universities and was also made an adjunct faculty of a few foreign universities. After that, I started my own consultancy biz while I still continue to do part-time lecturing. Now, almost towards retirement age, I can only look back and amused myself over the years of life in construction management and project management. Construction is in my blood but the years of hard toils takes its toll and age is no more on my side. I can only play some advisory role to the young and upstarts, while I stare at the follies of those businessmen who continue to make the same mistakes over and over again in the world of construction management.