Sunday September 10, 2006

Designs on a new dream

The Sunday Personality
By ANTHONY LIM

CHOOSING a vocation that is entirely different than what you studied or trained for isn’t exactly new. Many people have done exactly that, and found fulfilment in doing so.

Still, you’d expect that if you spent a lot of time and money to be a medical doctor, you wouldn’t throw it away to become ? an audio designer, would you?

Yet, that’s what Dr Wong Teck Lee has done, and what makes the story even more interesting is that the good doctor happens to be a Cambridge graduate. You can imagine all the raised eyebrows in conversations he has had with people, and, of course, the inevitable question: Why?

The extremely articulate and affable 37-year-old manages a wry smile when the matter is raised; no doubt, he’s heard this one countless times.

“The hiatus, if you can call it that, was to realise a dream. In medicine, there is no room for creativity. The standard expected of a doctor is to be safe above all else. As a doctor, I had to satisfy my creative needs outside of medicine, which brought me to electronics.”

It was, of course, not like that in the beginning, when he left for the UK to do his GCE A-Levels in 1987, and was accepted into St John’s College, Cambridge in 1989 to study medicine.

Graduating in 1995, he was posted to The Western, Edinburgh for six months, doing cardiology and general medicine before moving on to The Royal Liverpool, where he did another half-a-year stint in orthopaedics and general surgery.

Dr Wong says the choice to study medicine was a matter-of-fact decision.

“I decided to become a surgeon as I’ve got good manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination,” he says, smiling yet again.

“Besides, medicine seemed like the cool thing to do.”

Not that cool, it would seem, because by 1997 he was back in Malaysia and getting ready to set up his company and pursue the dream. A year later, Euphonic Research was born. It was originally called Euphony Research, the former taken from the Greek word “euphonia” for good sound.

Why the change from noun to adjective?

“It came about because the original name looked rather horrible in print, because the word ‘phony’ kept jumping out. And if you say the word out loud, well, you get the picture,” he says, laughing.

Steered back to the question of how it all began, Dr Wong states that the seeds for today were sown while he was at Caterham School doing his A-Levels.

“It was my physics teacher who I have to thank for this. He was brilliant, but what made all the difference was that he did not consider himself a physics teacher, but a physicist who also taught in a manner that explored science beyond the ambit of textbooks. This was a mindset that was completely different from the grade-A chasing dogma that I was brought up with.”

The defining moment came with the arrival of something from a car boot sale.

“My teacher brought along a Leak Stereo 20 amplifier that he’d bought for £5 (RM35), condition unknown, assumed broken. His challenge was that if anyone could get it working, it was his. I grabbed it with both hands, and that started me on the slippery slope.”

At Cambridge, that love affair continued, fuelled by the workings of the university, Dr Wong explains.

“Cambridge offers a level of networking and intellectual cross-pollination, where you’ll find students from different disciplines forming a melting pot to discuss ideas and concepts.

“Here, I met a group of like-minded people, and with whatever free time we had, we used the instruments lab to make things we needed and borrowed equipment to test our confections. While we didn’t find out how to make the perfect amplifier, in many aspects we came pretty darn close. Most importantly, we found 1000 ways how not to build an amplifier. You cannot build a better amplifier by copying an existing design. It’s deterministic. To progress, one must change, and innovate.”

“And there was certainly a lot of innovation in what we came up with. To our surprise, some of what we did then was at least as good, if not better, than many commercially available units. But, with exam after exam, these test mules and prototypes were often shelved as a result,” he relates.

The final push to making the dream a reality came by chance.

“In our neurology attachment as clinical students, we had to spend a day in a wheelchair. It allowed us to see from the perspective of the disabled, first hand, something I truly appreciated.

“One day, when I was arriving late for lectures at a specialist hospital, I parked in a vacant parking lot next to the hospital. It belonged to a factory. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the factory manufactured amplifiers, and was run by a charitable organisation that employs physically disabled people with good cognitive ability and hand-eye coordination to build them.

“The factory manager explained that the charitable organisation purchased the intellectual rights to previous generation amplifiers for the factory to make them. In making these amplifiers, the disabled people not only bring home their daily bread, but also get a sense of pride and belonging.”

That set him thinking that he could do the same by bringing it back home, he says.

“After I obtained my full GMC registration, I had to decide if I wanted to be a surgeon or if I wanted to pursue the dream. I chose the latter for one simple reason: If I succeed in refining and commercialising my designs, I’d be more than I would ever be as a doctor.”

Currently, Euphonic Research, which is located in Cyberjaya, has three full-fledged products, the ATT-80 preamp, AMP-80 and AMP-220 power amps, which are slowly making inroads in the local market.

But Dr Wong is in the midst of realising a cost no object amplifier, which he is looking at to not only captivate and capture markets beyond these shores, but also to change the mindset of many Malaysians who still view locally designed and made products with wariness.

He accepts that executing the ideas is not as easy as it sounds, and not just from an acceptance factor.

“Manufacturing has its own headaches, from getting it done to the right specification and making others see your point of view or needs. It’s not an insurmountable task, though it can be sometimes very challenging.”

He is more pragmatic about the choice he has made.

“The difficulty and opportunity costs of leaving the profession after obtaining a degree from a coveted university cannot be understated, and I returned home fully informed that I’d never be a surgeon if I spent the best years of my life pursuing this.

“Still, I think it is perhaps because I graduated from the ivory towers of Cambridge that I have dared assume risks that would seem insane to many,” he reflects.

Still, the path he has chosen is something that he truly believes in, whatever the eventual outcome.

“You can be the printer, putting other people’s ideas and thoughts to completion, and be a very good one at that. Which we mostly are – Malaysians can build things to the highest degree of sophistication, given the brief and means to do so. But why be content to be just the printer when you can be the writer and pave the way? We have no reason to carry a complex that we can’t do it, really, but if no one chooses to write, then we will forever remain printers, albeit very good ones.”

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