ZAIN HD, 24
BY NIKI CHEONG

Zain and I met in April, when I approached the “new-aged hippie,” as I call him, at KL Freeze in Unison that he organised. Truth be told, I was sceptical about the project, which aimed to mobilise a whole lot of people together to freeze for four minutes in Pavilion KL. In the end, 1,000 people showed up and I was convinced that his collective, RandomActs, was a cult—I was also ready to sign up (and chant if I had too).

My natural curiosity lead to many conversations with Zain since, not only to find out what he was working on, but also how his mind works. It’s hard to figure out, but there always seems to be a peculiar sense of rationality to his decisions. I’m convinced one day, his thinking would be referred to this as Zainisms.

Zain shared with me his ideas for his biggest project to date—RWP (Read while Waiting Project) a campaign to encourage people to bring along reading material whenever they know they will be waiting somewhere. The campaign includes a semi-flash mob (an RA tradition) event, which took place on 23 August. He also has something called BookCrossing planned, and I bet he’s got other ideas up his sleeve.

What strikes me most about this young man is how inspired and dedicated he is to his various “causes,” and how much courage and confidence he has to pull them off.

Niki Cheong is currently in charge of R.AGE at The Star’s Youth Desk, and writes a fortnightly column called The Bangsar Boy (yes, he lives there too). When he is not reading while waiting (ahem), he spends a lot of time on his blog (www.nikicheong.com/blog).