She traded high heels for flip-flops, figuratively speaking; choking traffic jams in a smog-congested capital city for a permanent island escape, big-city energy for the quiet comfort of walking just 50 steps from the home to the ‘office’, and more importantly, not being a slave to the dawn patrol.

After two decades of being the chief spin-master for organisations and conglomerates that included Bursa Malaysia, as well as heading international PR and communications agencies, Karina bought a one-and-a-half acre plot of land in Langkawi, built a house, and a 12-bedroom boutique hotel.

“I was looking around to see whether there was room for progression and expansion in my career then, and I realised, none of those options appealed to me, and I just wanted to get off the wheel,” she says without the slightest note of regret.

The thought of 20 more years on the endless run of cookie-cutter days, on the hamster-wheel of a frenetic life, had lost its lustre.

It took her a year of renting a weekend home in the green spaces of Kuala Kubu in Selangor to see if she could acclimatise to the relative isolation, quiet and the potential downsizing of her life.

“I’m not impulsive,” she says, and while she’s not dictated by the minutiae of planning, she is also, “simply cautious”.

After three years and many discussions with architects and builders alike, Karina dispensed with her home in Subang Jaya and landed in Langkawi to a new life.

“I wanted a life where I had more control over my time and my life,” she says.

“And I wanted to be my own boss of a business where I could handle the work myself because if people quit on me – and it happens everywhere – I could still carry on the work.”

She also wanted a business that required some brainpower, too, she adds, but she has learned that “elbow grease” is as important as learning to manage dozens of tiny problems with workers not of the white-collar variety.

“Coming from the corporate world, you think, how hard can it be to manage this?

“You learn very quickly that there is no manager to delegate jobs to, and you have workers waiting for you to literally tell them what to do.”

However, in the eight years since La Pari-Pari, the boutique hotel which she co-owns with her siblings was launched, it has won the TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Awards for Top Malaysian B&B three times in three non-consecutive years.

In La Pari-Pari sits Fat Cupid, a restaurant with its distinct reputation and loyal followers, headed and owned by resident chef Jacqueline How and her cousins.

Thanks to the pandemic dampening travel, visitor activity and sentiment, Karina and How came up with a fledgling business that could also potentially help address the long-standing and yet-unresolved issue of food scarcity in Langkawi.

While the island is heaven to travellers, its locals quietly endure the lags in shipments of food supplies from the mainland.

When Karina and How are serving customers in Fat Cupid, certain dishes are absent, simply because of these slow shipments, made more acute during festive seasons when barges are anchored.

“Having an owner-operated hotel and restaurant helps you see the gaps in both the consumer and supply side,” adds Karina.

However, this inspired the birth of Kebun Republik, with its self-sufficiency and community-benefitting aims.

“We not only use hydroponics to cultivate our crops, but we also built a cold-climate room to cultivate herbs and crops that wouldn’t thrive in tropical climates,” she says.

Kebun Republik, its ownership shared by Karina, How and two other friends, began just last month.

The group harvests between three to five kilograms of 20 types of pesticide-free vegetables and herbs each week, from pak choy to four varieties of lettuce.

The advantage of the Kebun Republik goes beyond self-sufficiency.

“A lot of smallholder farmers in Langkawi supply directly to the local sundry, but local expats (or “lexpats”, as Karina terms them) cannot communicate with the small retailers because of language barriers, so we step in by helping smallholders market their produce through Kebun Republik.”

Karina details how one smallholder, who “produces excellent kale, pumpkin and rosemary,” is one of a growing network of farmers who can benefit from the profit-sharing collective.

“If there were another, more severe lockdown, and supplies are suspended, we’d be prepared,” she says.

Recalling the first lockdown last March, Karina “felt like a billionaire being able to walk around one and a half acres of land”.

She also found time to pen a full-length novel about a woman in contemporary times dealing with issues of identity and race.

Having had her short stories published in four anthologies previously, being able to complete a full novel was the realisation of a goal gestating the last two decades.

Inasmuch as she is cognizant that some may have the means but not the courage to make such bold moves, she is also aware not everyone has the means to uproot their lives, especially if their appetite for risk or failure is not so big.

“You have to have a Plan B so that when you are blindsided if plans don’t work out, you won’t get knocked down.”

She acknowledges she is lucky for the luxury of choice, for the means and freedom to uproot her life in the big smoke of KL and finding her happiness in Langkawi.

“My goals may seem funny to others – like being able to wake up when I want and finding time during the pandemic to write a full novel – but that’s my form of happiness.”

See the beautiful surroundings of La Pari-Pari here and Kebun Republik’s progress here.