A photo of the apple of Raja Nazrin's eye, Zara Salim Davidson.

Here's a much better picture of Raja Nazrin's bride-to-be.

The photo of her that Utusan Malaysia printed really didn't do her any justice. Here's one newspaper that's itching for an irate phone call from the Perak palace, I reckon.


Below's her profile as published by Bernama. Convent Ipoh girl.

My sincere best wishes to the royal couple.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 8 (Bernama) -- Zara Salim Davidson, the bride-to-be of the Raja Muda of Perak, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, was one of the top students at the University of Nottingham and a former Perak state swimmer.

She graduated with first class honours in chemical engineering in July 1995.

Incidentally, her father-in-law-to-be, the Sultan of Perak, read law at the same university and was conferred the Bachelor of Laws degree in 1953 before being admitted to the English Bar in 1954.

Born in Ipoh on March 22, 1973, she is the youngest of four children of William Davidson and Sharifah Azaliah Syed Omar Shahabudin. She has three elder brothers.

Zara, who has a strong interest in foreign languages, had studied at SMJK Convent Ipoh and represented her school in squash and tennis from 1988 to 1990.

She also represented Perak in swimming between 1981 and 1987.

After completing her A-Levels at Prime College here in 1992, she left for the United Kingdom to study chemical engineering at the University of Nottingham and graduated with first class honours in July 1995. She also won the top student award for her final year project.

Zara joined the Business Evaluation Department in the Corporate Planning Unit of Petronas in December 1995 and was part of the team responsible for the successful establishment of the Kertih and Kuantan integrated petrochemical complexes, whose foreign partners included BP, BASF, Dow Chemicals and Mitsubishi.

She then became a Project Analyst in the Petronas Petrochemical Business Unit and was part of the core team developing the Petronas brand essence, which now forms part of the Petronas global branding strategy.

Between February 1999 and October 2000, she was Product Manager at Petlin (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, a Petronas joint venture with DSM of the Netherlands and Sasol of South Africa. She was also part of the Petronas project team to operationalise the largest single-train Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) plant in the world at Kertih.

Zara left Petronas in November 2001 to become Account Manager at Formis Network Services Sdn Bhd and then assumed the post of Vice-President of Partnerships & Alliances at Formis (Malaysia) Berhad, a technology-based company listed on Bursa Malaysia, between 2003 and 2005.

Between 2005 and 2007, Zara, who is a certified life-saver and adventure sports enthusiast, became Managing Director of Forthwave Consulting Sdn Bhd, a hydrocarbon technical engineering and software development company in Kuala Lumpur.

-- BERNAMA