This is the story of a Malaysian man whose inheritance was spent chasing his father’s dream, not his own. It’s about family, betrayal, quiet resentment, and the long shadow money leaves behind.
I grew up in a somewhat comfortable lifestyle in my early years. We lived with my grandfather who was the patriarch of the family. He was stern, hardworking and everyone respected him. He was a stone-mason by trade.
He established one of the first marble companies in Malaysia, which grew to a large company with about 150 employees. He worked mostly with marble, carving them in large slabs often seen in luxurious olden day buildings or villas – for floors or pillars. He was a craftsman. He died in 1999, leaving behind his oldest son, my dad, and two younger daughters.
I am the oldest son of his oldest son, and after his death, it was discovered that he left me the biggest inheritance compared to everyone else. It amounted to around RM1 million ringgit.
Mostly in cash with a small percentage in some stocks.
I was 13 years old at this time and not allowed to touch it until I was 18, and as per the laws, my parents were the custodian, particularly my dad. Of course, at this young age, I didn’t understand the gravity and importance of having an inheritance fund.
My father decides to start a business
My father, having seen his father have success as a business man, I believe always dreamed of following in his footsteps. However, he was not interested in the stone industry. He sold off my grandfather’s company shortly after his death.
He decided to open an Italian restaurant as his aspirations were to offer Italian cuisines to Malaysian customers. My father had travelled to Italy a few times in his adult life and decided that Malaysia needed to be exposed to the beauty of Italian cuisines.
Mind you, this was a Chinese man in his 40s, deciding to open a restaurant after only being a hobby-cook, with no F&B experience. It was doomed to fail from the beginning.
Over the next few years, I remember helping my dad out with his fancy Italian restaurant. He imported fancy Italian wife, cheese from different regions in Italy.
and ham cured in 10 different ways. He even hired a chef from Italy.
He was determined to be the business man that his father was. I later found out when I was 16, that he had used a large chunk of my inheritance, which was legal, under the guise of “investing” it. As I was a minor, and he was my father, he got away with it.
He spent lavishly on the decorations, the tablecloth, and the imported ingredients. It was his ego-centric approach where he wanted to create a place he could bring his high flying friends to be entertained. His favourite line was “on the house”.
It was his own personal private club where he would treat his friends to fancy liquor, he would entertain them late into the night, making no money because it was always a “friends & family” discount.
The restaurant was almost always empty of paying customers, perhaps on a weekend night we would see about half the tables full, if we were lucky. I could see the stress of running to the place getting to my dad as he was determined to be successful.
When I found out that he used more than half of my inheritance already, I was still in school, living with him, depending on him as a parental figure. At 16, I couldn’t understand the gravity of the situation.
By the time I turned 18, that’s when I started learning more. What was left was a mere RM100,000, which wasn’t much accounting for the fact that I was going to use it to pursue my degree in the UK. Over the years, I slowly learnt the extent of how much money was actually left to me, the extent my dad went to achieve his dreams, and how selfish his actions were.
It wasn’t long ago, when I found out that he shortchanged his sisters when he sold their dad’s business, resulting in one of the sisters cutting contact with him. Growing up he always told me she “ran away with her Australian husband” and doesn’t care about the family.
Now, I finally know why he has a bad relationship with his siblings.
The inheritance fund has long dried up, my father’s Italian restaurant has long closed its doors, and I’m now a 40 year old, stuck in a dead-end job, working 9am to 8pm just to get by and support my wife and kids.
I am holding on to so much anger for my father, of how he was so selfish and careless with money. I know if I had that money right now, being the same age as my dad when he got it, I would have invested it in a way that would help my children live a better life, not to fund some side hobby dream of mine.
These days my relationship with my dad is terribly strained, with a lot of unsaid things between the two of us. Unfortunately, these are the cards I have right now, and the most I can do is to try and build a better life for my children.
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