Well, officially the National language is Malay but the language use for the law and commercial reasons is English.
I'm sure there are more people like the guy you met who grew up speaking other language such as English in America and UK most likely. However, even it Singapore, while the education system encourage the study of the mother tongue as a second language, some people still find it tough because their families have predominantly spend English at home which may sound kind of sad but I guess that's just the way things happen to some people.