Tan Sri Wan Azmi Wan Hamzah

So what is retirement all about? Not just golf and soap operas, at least not according to Tan Sri Wan Azmi Wan Hamzah, the luncheon speaker at the Perdana Leadership Foundation’s CEO Forum 2010. The “lapsed” chartered accountant regaled the audience with humorous anecdotes on retirement, ensuring that, however one regards retirement, one would have been thoroughly tickled and entertained by the speech.

Tan Sri Wan Azmi with Mr. Shah Hakim of Scomi Berhad

As Tan Sri said in his speech, “For most people, retirement happens predictably and in leisurely fashion – when the mandatory retirement age written into the terms of employment, your personal use-by-date, comes by. On the fateful day, everybody in the office tries to be nice to you including, and most particularly, the ones to whom you have been less than generous with promotions, financial rewards, compliments or impressions. There is afternoon tea with cakes and biscuits. Along comes some company big-wig (it’s always somebody a bit bigger than yourself in the organizational scheme of things, and if you are The Big One, then the non-executive chairman is woken up, dressed, talcum-powdered and wheeled out for your Big Last Day), to say very flattering and pleasant things, all quite untrue of course, and gives you a gold watch or a potted orchid to take home with a broad-sheet-sized farewell card recording everybody’s scribbled best wishes. They accompany you to the door, leaving you with the distinct feeling that they expect you to go straight home and never come back, and to make the journey between workplace and final resting place not a prolonged one, never mind your planned stops at the golf club and/or the surau in between.”

The full speech is available on our website, www.perdana.org.my!