I was a Malaysian citizen until I went to England in 1978 and got married to a French woman the next year. Naturally, this meant that I had to travel to France a lot for family reasons and as Malaysians need a visa to enter France, I had to apply for a visa every time I planned to go there.

Not only was this expensive, it also meant waiting around between three to five hours each time as visa applications have to be done in person and the French consulate is not the most efficient of places.

This also meant I had to take an additional day off work each time which my employer did not appreciate.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I then decided to apply for a French passport as this would make my traveling so much easier. I rang the Malaysian consulate about this and they were initially very polite and asked for my personal details, such as passport number, IC number, home address, place of work, parent's address in Kuala Lumpur, names of all my family members in the UK and Malaysia, etc.

At the end of the phone call, they suddenly told me in a nasty voice that I had to surrender my passport immediately because I had been stripped of my Malaysian citizenship by virtue of just asking about applying for a foreign passport!

My Malaysian passport and IC were both invalidated and using either would have been a serious offence. Very nice, I thought, as now I am completely stateless in a foreign country, thanks to my government's policies.

It ended up okay in the end. I was a computer specialist at the time and I went to the home office in Croydon and explained my situation and they contacted my employer and I obtained British nationality and a British passport within three months.

The funny thing is that many years later, when Cyberjaya was being developed, the Malaysian government was trying to attract foreign computer companies (including my company) to relocate there.

I spoke to several persons there who were anxious to offer me permanent residency in Malaysia if I was to open a company in Cyberjaya. Guess what I told them?

Also, I think I would have been giving up nine-tenths of my income if I were to relocate back to Malaysia, so it really was not an option.

The moral of the story is that Malaysia did me a really big favour, just like it did Vijay Singh a big favour and one should not think twice about giving up Malaysian citizenship if one can go and live in a better country.