Met at Monash - Rachel and Keiron
Met at Monash – Rachel Saw and Kieron Ngoh
Rock-climbing brought the two Monash Malaysia graduates together and, eight years later, a love of sport and competition lives on.
It was an inauspicious start. As Rachel Saw was walking to the computer lab, a pile of books in hand, her eyes fell on one particularly scruffy character standing nearby, Kieron Ngoh. “There was this super-sweaty guy with messy hair who was dressed in dirty clothes and torn jeans,” she recalls. “I thought: ‘How can someone come to uni looking like that?’”
Jump forward four years, during which the pair never met, and this time it was Kieron’s turn to be intrigued by the young woman taking part in the planking competition he was organising for the Monash rock-climbing club.
Rachel (Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, 2016; PhD Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, 2022) asked him how long they should hold the plank, and the ever-competitive Kieron (Mechanical Engineering, 2016) suggested as long as she could.
“What he didn't know was, at that point, I was doing 45 minutes of core training every night,” Rachel laughs. “My planking record was nine minutes and 43 seconds.”
The challenge began. By the six-minute mark, almost everyone else, even the strongest and fittest, had dropped out. Kieron was still holding the plank, thinking he had outdone everyone, when someone shouted: “That girl is still there!” Rachel was still calmly holding the plank position. But Kieron’s muscles started shaking. Finally, he surrendered.
Monash lives
Eight years later, they’re still together, and sports – including rock-climbing – are a big part of their lives.
They’d initially found their mutual love of the sport as a release from the pressures of studying. Kieron had recently graduated from his mechanical engineering degree at Monash Malaysia, a course he chose because it was the most versatile, while still leaving enough time to participate in extracurricular activities.
Those activities, including joining the rock-climbing club – he would later become president – as well as the music club, the University choir and the dance club. “I was doing a lot of things!” he recalls.
Rachel decided to study engineering after she learned a majority of CEOs had engineering degrees. But she took it one step further. “I chose Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering because I thought it is the most difficult discipline – a high failure rate creates low supply, but high demand,” she says. “I just had to make sure I didn’t fail!”
The course lived up to her expectations, and for the first three years of her course, she barely had time to socialise. It was study, study, study – and her friends were the same.
“Because we had so many assessments and we had such high standards, it made me stronger and definitely more resilient, and more organised,” she says. “I feel that Monash cultivated a discipline in my personality, so that I’m able to deal with the challenges that come my way.”
A shared future
By her fourth year, Rachel was optimistic that she was going to make it through the course, and she allowed herself the occasional break from her studies to try out the many other opportunities available to students, including the rock-climbing club, whose facilities were located in the heart of the Malaysian campus. And that’s when the fateful planking competition took place – and their future together was set.
After graduating, Rachel went on to complete a PhD developing circadian lighting (in layman’s terms, lighting that’s better for our health). She then worked as a research and teaching assistant at Monash, and is now an academic and lecturer at HELP University in Malaysia, focused on computing and AI.
Kieron started a fitness coaching business in his last year of university, which grew into a tennis coaching business (he previously played tennis at the national level). Those skills and experience laid the foundation for a move into corporate training; he recently received John Maxwell leadership team certification as a speaker, trainer and coach, and joined training provider Exceed Excellence Sdn Bhd in Malaysia.
Eight years on, has Kieron challenged Rachel to a planking rematch? Would he beat her? “I'm not interested in finding out!” he says.
