The inventor who chased the secrets of the universe

When a book about the life of Mr Sim Wong Hoo, Singapore’s best-known technopreneur, hit the shelves in March, one particular anecdote caught my eye.

One of Mr Sim’s old colleagues recounted the days when their company was not doing well and the stock price was low. He recalled that Mr Sim – who died in 2023 – was truly troubled and often said: “I’ve let the shareholders down. So many people here need to make a living – it’s my responsibility.”

I had the privilege of knowing Mr Sim for several years and this is exactly the sort of man that he was: a person of integrity and imagination.

He was the modern incarnation of that class of Chinese gentleman or junzi (君子) found only in television or the pages of classics.

Like a classic jianghu (江湖) adventure, my encounter with Mr Sim began with me riding to the outskirts of our island – namely, Jurong East – on a spring day in 2018 to knock on his door.

Creative Technology, Mr Sim’s company, had invented a new headphone technology that was turning heads in audio tech circles. I was a young reporter for The Business Times, eager for a scoop.

To prepare for the interview, I familiarised myself with his resume.

In 1981, at the age of 25, he started Creative with his meagre savings.

He created the first designed-in-Singapore personal computer in 1984 and the world’s first multimedia PC two years later.

Creative was the first Singapore company to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 1992. It launched a portable digital music player in 1999, two years before Apple released the iPod.

But Apple cornered the market with more savvy branding and Mr Sim withdrew into seclusion.

The man I met that day was warm and gentle-mannered, utterly without guile. His primary concern was to push technology to its limits to bring “something good” to people.

He said that the idea for the new headphone holography product he was showcasing had come to him more than two decades earlier, but the technology had not been ready for what he had in mind.

Meanwhile, his company’s fortunes had dipped and Creative was delisted from Nasdaq.

But, with a twinkle in his eye, he said: “In these 20 years we were not sleeping, you know? We’ve been working.”

Programming the universe

After my article appeared, Mr Sim invited me for lunch. It is the first time I remember someone tapping the table when I poured them tea. For the Chinese, it’s a way of thanking someone silently, without interrupting a conversation.

Mr Sim thanked me for my article. We spoke for a long time and started to stay in touch.

That same year, Mr Sim invited me to join a trek that his brother was organising through Yunnan’s Meili mountain range. To train for it, we’d run around Bukit Timah Hill on weekends.

I will always treasure our forest walks. He shared his thoughts freely and from those you could draw the lessons you wanted.

I wanted to talk to him about markets and technology. Instead he taught me about spacetime, invisible dimensions and how electrons, because they’re so small, can change dimensions all the time.

He said his life’s goal was to discover the secret of the universe.

And remember, he said, the universe always holds something back: “Some ambiguity.” (At the very smallest level, you can either know the position or the velocity of matter, but not both, he said.)

That’s why he believed that reality as we know it can be altered, through our power of will.

He named this technique “programming the universe”, and encouraged me to try it. “You have a strong will,” he observed.

Surprisingly, for a businessman, he worried that the capitalist ethos could harm us in the long run.

“Never lose integrity no matter how hungry you are,” he said. “Then you can maintain peace of mind and can accept hardship.”

The art of giving

Mr Sim made interesting products. So when it came to giving, he had to make that interesting too.

The Conscience Charity Sale he hosted in 2003 was one such occasion recorded in the book Sim Wong Hoo: The Light We Remember, which his family has published.

Buyers were invited to pay any amount they liked at a charity sale of items that Mr Sim had bought from the cash-strapped One.99 retail chain during the SARS crisis. He had probably expected folks to give generously.

Instead, he had to close one eye when some shoppers sneaked away more than 20 items without paying the minimum of 50 cents for each piece after the first 20; others without donating a single cent.

Reporters zoomed in on one boy who paid 20 cents for 20 items, and asked for change. “A conscience test some failed”, one headline rebuked.

Mr Sim’s response was cool: “If they’re in need of help and took the effort to come down and help themselves, then it’s okay.”

It was classic Mr Sim – gracious, even when things did not go his way. He would give without expecting anything in return and even see the point of view of those who had taken from him. In the same spirit, he could talk about old rivals and the battles he had lost without rancour or cynicism.

Mr Sim, who never married, became Singapore’s youngest billionaire at the age of 45. But he never sold most of his shares in Creative, and drew only a $1 salary since 2008.

Yet he gave freely, he gave happily, and he gave often, because so many people came seeking his help. The group hikes and Chinese cultural events that Mr Sim liked to sponsor revealed his grasp of the joy of sharing.

Mr Sim did describe himself as spiritual. He avoided the word religion because he was wary of how good things can get turned into dogmas, especially religion.

But he wasn’t one to get caught up with labels. He started going to church when he was younger, I’m told, simply to accompany his mother after his elder brother died.

He did it his way

Mr Sim saw things and did things his own way. He was also a great comic writer.

He never published an autobiography, but in Chaotic Thoughts From The Old Millennium – a book that he dedicated to the younger generation – he reproduced a micro-biography that he admitted to ghost-writing for a separate publication.

It begins in a kampung in Bukit Panjang, where a boy grew up with no toys, but with a powerful urge to create and love:

“He invented his own board games a la Monopoly because he could not afford one. But nobody would play with him.

“He created his own art style, but none of his art teachers appreciated it. Maybe he did not even show it to them.

“Still, none of these really bothered him. In his heart, all he knew was that he liked to create. Though he received no encouragement, he persevered.”

Naturally, this curious child would grow to be a man who roamed free across the domains of science and philosophy – connecting the dots and collecting strange stories that he used to stretch our minds.

The first time I ever saw someone meditating was Mr Sim, in Yunnan. Having shepherded our group to an old town for sightseeing, he was tired.

He found a corner of floor in a small building, folded his legs and closed his eyes. As the crowds swept by, he sat humbly – replenishing his qi (energy).

He told me that when his late mother was bedridden, he would meditate and send qi to her by holding her hand.

Not surprisingly, many people in the book touched on the imagery of soft rain when talking about him. Like rain, he transformed others simply because it was his nature.

The last time we spoke, I asked him what he’d been up to. He said that he was doing more research on the universe.

We never did get to discuss that in detail, but every now and then something reminds me of him.

The other day, I poured my aunt a cup of tea. She replied by tapping the table with two fingers in a proxy bow, and I thought of Mr Sim.

In this age of violence and confrontation, we could all gain from his gentle wisdom.