Could it be the same guy?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a story in NST about gyms, specifically on the techniques they use to make you sign up and then to make it incredibly difficult for you to terminate your membership.

As part of my research, I went undercover. Posing as a potential customer looking to 'bulk up', I visited two gyms in KL, one of which was California Fitness in Mid Valley.

At CF, the fitness consultant/counsellor/salesman (choose one) who attended to me was a guy who only wanted to be known as Amed. Very pleasant guy. He showed me around the gym, answered my questions and later as expected tried to close the sale of the membership. But he was a professional; at no point did I sense that I was being coerced into signing up.

We have not reached the punch line yet. Bear with me.

Anyway, where Amed was a professional, I was also smart so I left without signing up.

The next day -- and here's where it gets interesting because this part never came out in the newspaper article -- I saw a program on TV1 called Tilawah Interaktif.

Guess who I saw hosting the program? I almost fell out of my chair. It was the guy I met the previous day at the gym!

I thought, why would the host of a religious program sell gym memberships? On the one hand, you try to get people to read the Quran properly. On the other, you try to convince people into parting with their future income, often for no good reason. These goals do not go hand-in-hand!

I tried to rationalise it. Maybe he needed the extra money. Maybe RTM does not pay enough so he figured he could put his interpersonal skills to some use. After all, ini bukannya jual dadah.

So was it or was it not Amed? It was a real VK Lingam moment for me. The guy looked like Amed, sounded like Amed, but I wasn't sure if it was 100 percent Amed.

So I waited until the end credit and learnt that the host's name was Hafiz Hamidun, a former singer with nasyid group, Unic.

Aha, so that must be it -- 'Amed' must've come from the Hamidun part of his name! I was extremely pleased by how smart I was.

I decided to call the guy up to expose him for the fake that he was. We reporters love this sort of thing. Twice I tried. The first time, I tried to shock him by asking for Hafiz Hamidun. It didn't work. He just said salah nombor lah.

The second time, I did it properly. I asked for Amed, introduced myself and then asked my question. I got my answer. No, he's NOT Hafiz Hamidun. In fact, he works full-time at CF and sounded quite amused by the whole thing.

Really ah?

Sometimes we tend to believe what we want to believe.