Ten years later...

In mid-2011, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a telephone call from Suria Zainal, now Senior Director at the Malaysian Timber Council (MTC). It had been ten years since we met; I was then the writer of MTC's tenth year anniversary coffee-table book, which was produced by Editions Didier Millet. Suria told me that MTC would be celebrating their twentieth year in 2012 and they would like me to write the book. Of course, I said 'yes'! It's not often that a writer can claim to have written two commemorative books for the same organisation, ten years apart!

On 12 July 2012, MTC held a simple but classy dinner to celebrate their twenty years of serving the Malaysian timber industry, during which the book was launched. I hadn't seen the book at all before this. The text had been written by me, revised by MTC where necessary and edited by Datin Noor Azlina Yunus, with whom I had worked on my first major writing/editing project as well as my book projects for UMW Holdings. 

The design was undertaken by an advertising company and Azlina and I were not involved in the process, although we did have a look at the initial book draft. At that point, many things were not right with the book. After that, due to time constraints, Suria and her team at MTC carried on without us. It was therefore with some anxiety that Azlina and I (both of us were at the dinner) pulled the book out of its slipcase when we received our copies after the launch. Well, we were both pleased with the end result; the book we held in our hands looked nothing at all like the draft that we saw. 

The book in its slipcase.

The book... uncovered.

The start of a chapter.

Some of the pages above and below.

The book also shared the thoughts of key industry personalities.

Suria, who managed the project, had wanted the tone of the twentieth anniversary book to be somewhat informal compared to the earlier book. This was to be achieved by an anecdotal approach in the written text as well as a contemporary and bright, but not garish, design. I believe that she achieved her objective. 

The tenth anniversary book certainly looked very different 

from the newly-launched twentieth anniversary book.