Introducing Dr. Sazali and Family

Dr. Sazali & Family

I would like to formally introduce Dr. Sazali Zainal Abidin and family to the community. Most likely, you have seen him around recently at the WUMA buka puasa event and may have wondered who he is. Dr. Sazali is a relatively new addition to our community. He is a permanent academic staff member of the School of Management, University of Waikato and before that was a lecturer at UPM. Dr. Sazali has kindly provided me with a short biography of himself and family:

Dr. Sazali and family arrived in Hamilton on June 09, 2009 after 7 months long application process to migrate to New Zealand. He is now a finance lecturer at the Waikato Management School. Prior to this, he was a lecturer at Graduate School of Management (GSM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), a position he held for 3 years since June 2006. He was the CEO of MAA Mutual Berhad, a unit trust management company under the Melewar Group before he joined UPM. He is married to Rosmaliza Rahim since 1994 and they are blessed with 4 children. Ms. Rosmaliza was a Manager, Customer Service Management of Telekom Malaysia Berhad before they came here. Their eldest son, Irfan (11 years old) is the main reason why they migrated to New Zealand. Irfan is now schooling at Berkley Intermediate Normal School. Daughter Iffah (6 years old) and son Aqeel (5 years old) are schooling at Hillcrest Normal School. The youngest is Areef (will be 2 years old this October). Ms. Rosmaliza’s mother, Madam Hasmah followed the family here and she has been very helpful in taking care of the children. The family is very pleased with the warm welcome and hospitality shown by the Malaysian community in Hamilton and wish to express their gratitude for the kindness.

On behalf of the community, I warmly welcome Dr. Sazali and family to Hamilton. It is a rare blessing to the community, especially to the Malaysian students here to have a permanent Waikato University lecturer as our neighbour and member.  Unlike many of us students, Dr. Sazali will be staying here for the long run and thus I hope the student organization, WUMA and the wider community will take the effort to include Dr. Sazali and family into our activities. I hope that Dr. Sazali and his wife, Puan Rosmaliza, could eventually join the likes of Pak Rahman and family to become one of our anchor-person here for the community, someone who new students and migrants could turn to for advice and support.