It’s Kota Bharu in the remote Malaysian state of Kelantan. The day is hot and sticky and a young John Ong anxiously opens an envelope with his School report. It would be a passport out of the traditions of a developing country he loved but wanted to escape. The siren call of the masjid had little relevance to the bright young man whose love of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin lured him away from it like Orpheus.
Australia was the land of his Golden Fleece. Its nomenclature was audio. It seemed unattainable and couldn’t be possessed. “Education was the key to my new life and career,” he says. Ong eventually secured a spot at Queensland University and graduated in mechanical engineering, with the aim of somehow working in audio. “I got off the boat in 1998,” he joked, to pursue a life in hi-fi.
Ong’s audio experience began with an epiphany in a Malaya hi-fi shop at the age of 14. “The young salesman educated me in one hit, sonically and musically," he says. “He played a form of rock music I hadn’t heard before on a quality system.” It was a life-changing revelation.
Western music wasn’t banned per se, but it was underground; you had to know someone who knew someone. But some stores were permitted to carry it. That was commerce,
“It knocked me out,” continues Ong.
