KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 2 — Most people spend their 50th year reflecting on the past or settling into a comfortable routine.

But corporate trainer and TEDx speaker Imran Zainal decided to turn the entire Klang Valley into a message to the nation.

In an extraordinary feat of GPS art that spanned 1,230 square kilometres — larger than the landmass of Singapore — Imran spent 12 days driving and walking to trace a massive, legible message across the map: “Happy Msia Day. Create As 1. And Rise.”

While the final image is digital GPS art, the journey to create it was far from smooth.

It was a gruelling, solitary pursuit that saw Imran navigating construction sites, wading through unkempt cemeteries and battling the limitations of map data, all while trying to complete the project in time for Malaysia Day.

The perfectionist’s gamble

The project, which ran from August 26 to September 7, was not always meant to be a solo mission.

Imran initially partnered with someone to help record the GPS data, but the collaboration quickly hit a wall due to Imran’s self-described “OCD” levels of perfectionism.

“I would notice a line wasn’t perfect, or a path was slightly off, and I’d need to backtrack and redo it,” Imran said.

His partner, not sharing the same obsession with precision, eventually parted ways with him.

The split cost Imran a month of progress, as the location data was stored on his partner’s device.

With Malaysia Day fast approaching, he was forced to start from scratch, but looking back, he believed the setback allowed him to work without compromise.

“Being on my own meant I could be as meticulous as I needed to be without compromise,” he said.

“It was a massive amount of physical and mental energy for one person, but it felt right. It was a story of unity — but one I had to write alone.”

From thorns to construction sites

The scale of the project required more than just driving.

While 85 per cent of the route was completed by car, the remaining 15 per cent demanded manual, physical labour.

To complete the intricate shapes within the letters – such as the wings of a dove and the delicate petals of a hibiscus flower in Kajang – Imran found himself trekking through overgrown 

Chinese cemeteries in Kajang and Klang.

He emerged from these sessions literally “covered in thorns and blood”.

Navigating the urban maze of the Klang Valley presented its own set of hurdles.

In Cheras, a planned route led directly into a construction site.

Refusing to deviate, Imran said he spoke with the safety officer and explained his mission to record the data.

The interaction ended with him donning a construction helmet after being granted special permission to pass through.

“Sometimes, I just had to improvise when I encountered unexpected roadblocks, construction or outdated map data,” he said.

Finding the second act

For Imran, the project was about more than national pride; it also brought him back to creative pursuits he had left behind.

Drawing inspiration from 1990s cinema, he recalled how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote Good Will Hunting when they were young, before eventually making their mark in Hollywood.

He, too, had once spent time in Oxford library archives in the late 1990s researching a script, only to eventually abandon his creative pursuits for the predictability of the corporate world.

Turning 50, he began thinking about whether there was a “second act” to his life.

“The people who truly make a difference to our communities are the ones who continuously reinvent themselves,” Imran said. “It doesn’t matter what age you are; you are capable of doing great things.”

A message for the next generation

The artwork concluded at KL Tower, where Imran invited his hiking and life coaching students to join him in finishing the final 50 metres of the letter ‘S’.

He said it was a poignant moment, symbolising the passing of the baton from one generation to the next, with Malaysian, Japanese and Chinese youths participating in a project built around unity.

The “create as 1” message, he explained, is a call for Malaysians to collaborate rather than compete, reflecting what he sees as the spirit of the country’s independence movement.

As for what lies ahead, Imran is already dreaming up his next project: a silhouette of the country’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj.

“No matter how my life ends, this will be a feather in my cap,” Imran said.

“At the end of the day, nobody looks back at their life and thinks, ‘I’m so glad I fulfilled my bills.’ You want to be able to say you did something different.”