When he was just 12 years old, Jacki Ng masterminded a bold
criminal scheme.
Then a member of a street gang, he cajoled a 17-year-old fellow
ruffian to steal a cheque belonging to the latter's uncle.
Ng wrote it out for $20,000, forged the signature and instigated
another 17-year-old to cash it.
"I had elaborate plans for the money. I wanted to start a
sustainable loan shark venture," says Mr Ng, now 37.
But the teenager who tried to cash the cheque got caught.
"The bank found him suspicious and reported him to the police.
He was arrested, and after that, so was I," he adds.
The older boy was sentenced to a year in jail. Ng was let off
with a stern warning because he was a minor.
"I was a horrible kid, and that was a horrible thing I did," he
says.
The horrible kid is today a legitimate entrepreneur.
He employs more than 40 people to help him run seven dive
operations, a foot reflexology shop, a multimedia company and a
production agency which collectively make more than US$6 million
(S$7.33million) a year.
It is quite a turnaround for a Secondary 2 dropout who battled
family violence, business setbacks, a failed marriage and
depression before finally gaining a firm grip on life.
Rene Descartes, Bertrand Russell and other philosophers saved
him, he says.
More about that later.
At just 1.61m, the diminutive founder of Gill Divers has a mop
of coarse straight hair, large impish eyes, a roguish smile and
looks more like an adolescent skateboarder than a businessman and
father of two teenagers.
Mr Ng, who has an older sister, grew up in Geylang and
Changi.
His parents ran a butcher's stall.
He was a menace of a pupil at Geylang Methodist Primary School,
where he got into scuffles regularly and once threatened to beat up
a teacher who had humiliated him.
"I guess I have the Napoleon complex, I was very sensitive," he
says.
"I was also hyperactive and attention-seeking, very aggressive
and rather violent. I probably got it from my dad."
He remembers being caned by his father until he bled.
"Occasionally, he used his fists on me when the cane didn't
work. But he stopped when I learnt to whack him back and the
beatings became fights instead," says Mr Ng, who was still in his
teens when his parents divorced.
He joined a street gang in the Aljunied area when he was 12.
Although he was academically able and especially good in
mathematics, his propensity for fights got him caned publicly and
booted out of Geylang Methodist Secondary School after a year.
"My mother had to plead and beg for Changkat Changi Secondary
School to take me in," he says.
He lasted barely three months there, and was expelled for
fighting.
He remembers his mother collecting him from school after he was
expelled.
"We went home, she went to work and I remember listening to my
Bananarama album and the song I Want You Back and I just cried and
cried. I thought to myself, 'That's it. I am dead, my future is
screwed,'" he says.
After a couple of months at a private school, he got into the
Institute of Technical Education in Balestier where he earned his
NTC 3 in Motor Vehicle Mechanics.
While there, he made friends with a course mate who introduced
him to the world of disc jockeying and dirt bike scrambling.
The hobbies got him out of trouble and also inspired him to
brush up his English since it was what his new friends spoke.
"I had to keep up with them. One day, I was at McDonald's and
trying to order a fish fillet and the girl at the counter couldn't
understand what I was saying. I went home very angry, with her and
with myself. I told myself I needed to get it right."
The hitherto dialect-speaking Ng started reading English novels
and watching English television shows and movies with a
vengeance.
"I watched Total Recall five or six times," he says, referring
to the sci-fi movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. "It was one of
those movies where you really have to understand the dialogue to
know what's going on."
During that period, he tried his hand at a few jobs.
He worked at Burger King and helped an uncle run a stall selling
fruit in Hougang.
With help from his mother, he next opened a stall selling
chicken in a small market in Hougang Avenue 7.
"I had to wake up at four every morning. Whatever was left
unsold was fried, and I'd cycle to Tampines in the afternoon to
sell fried chicken," he says.
It did not quite take off, and he closed shop several months
later.
While in national service, he earned money delivering a
publication, Human Resource, in the evenings.
He was 20 when he married a clerk and they had two children.
Through his sister, he found a job coordinating exports in a
freight- forwarding company called Famous after completing his
national service.
He did well but left barely a year later after he roughed up a
colleague who had smacked him on the head over work.
The owner of a used car company, located next to a motorbike
shop Mr Ng frequented, offered him a job.
"I learnt how to sell and buy cars. I loved it, it was an art,"
says Mr Ng, who could sometimes pull in $13,000 a month.
Ambition drove him to contact an uncle to help him start up a
business building air-conditioner risers
Although he made money initially, the young businessman ended up
losing more than $300,000 after a contractor which engaged his
company to do a big job went bust.
"It didn't help that my uncle also gambled away some of the
company's money," he says with a grimace.
The loss so traumatised the 26-year-old that he fell into a blue
funk.
"I couldn't sleep, I couldn't work, I even had suicidal
thoughts. Back then, I didn't realise it was depression," he
says.
But he took up computer courses and discovered he had no
problems grasping technical concepts.
Despite his lack of paper qualifications, he got himself a job
in technical support at SingNet.
The company sent him for courses which stood him in good stead
when he became a net server engineer in Hewlett-Packard next.
"HP also found out that I could understand and cope with
computer stuff, and they sent me to a lot of classes and
training."
Although scarred by the failure of his air-con company, he
decided to take up an opportunity to deal in alternative printer
cartridges.
He quit his job to set up a company but two faulty shipments
landed him in financial trouble again.
By this time, big cracks had started to appear in his
marriage.
The couple decided to go their separate ways. The two children,
now 15 and 17, live with their mother.
"I moved back with my mother and I was at least sane enough to
know that I should not drink or take any drugs," he says.
Instead he started devouring philosophy books.
"I was reading Bertrand Russsell and Aristotle and Plato.
My favourite is Descartes.
Somehow, reading armed me with a lot of clarity and helped me to
rationalise my behaviour in the past."
"It was my Sophie's World," he says, referring to the novel by
Norwegian writer Jostein Gaarder.
The book revolves around a teenage girl who is introduced to
philosophical thinking and the history of philosophy by a
middle-aged philosopher.
"That's why I can talk to you about my abandonment issues and
Napoleon complex," adds Mr Ng, who speaks English fluently.
Encouraged by friends, he also took up diving during this
period.
"The key thing about diving is that you meet a lot of people.
Meeting people helps you get a good sense of who you are. I found
myself again," he says.
In 2003, two friends invited him to set up Gill Divers.
One of them even paid for him to be trained as a diving
instructor.
"When we started it was just one desk in an office shared with a
Filipino travel agency in Lucky Plaza," he recalls.
The early days were tough. Both his partners left not long
after, one to take up a full-time job.
Mr Ng decided to wing it alone.
Leveraging on his technical expertise, he had by then built a
website for the company.
He started work on a software to cut red tape and introduce
systems in the diving industry which used to be very cut-throat and
competitive.
He found an investor to develop the software One Diver, and it
is now used by several dive shops in Singapore.
Today, he owns seven dive operations, including one in Bintan,
Indonesia.
On average, his shops organise trips for between 80 and 150
divers a week, and conduct diving lessons for a couple of hundred
of enthusiasts a month.
Mr Toh Yee Choon, 34, one of the original founders who is now a
regional trainer for a computer company, says he is not at all
surprised by Mr Ng's success.
"He is very dedicated. Once he's focused on something, he drives
himself really hard. When we first started, he was really down and
out. But diving became his passion, and he has this fearlessness
which makes him really different."
"He earned a lot of respect by introducing systems in the
industry. He's great at marketing and managing change and he's
managed to get investors on board."
The business has an annual turnover of more than $5 million.
Mr Ng is brimming with ideas, including plans to invest in a
dive boat, and develop a range of diving gear.
One of the great joys of running his diving business, he says,
is the opportunity to give young people a shot at a career.
He has in place a DMA (dive management associates) programme for
his staff.
Those with potential will be made shareholders.
Having found his fins and feet, he started diversifying into
other businesses.
He owns reflexology outlet Feet Press, and roped in a partner to
start a digital media company called Pin two years ago.
With another partner, he set up a production company Noon Talk,
which rolled out Timeless Love, a romantic feature film starring
Kimberly Chia, last year.
It has also produced commercials for watch group City Chain, and
an online variety show called Prince and Princess.
The company also has a talent management arm, and its stable of
artistes includes Chia, Xu Bin and Aloysius Tan.
"Gill Divers is thriving, Pin is struggling and Noon Talk is
doing okay," he reveals.
Although he can easily afford his own home, Mr Ng - who has been
in a stable relationship for several years - sleeps in a small unit
above one of his dive shops in Hong Kong Street.
He prefers to plough the profits back into the business,
He turns philosophical when asked if he harbours great hopes for
the future.
"I hope I will one day be financially comfortable without
working. Then, I can focus on doing things which are purely
meaningful."
