All Those Years Ago (Part 1)

It's lights out finally for me in August 2009. I'd thought this day would never come. But it did, slow but certain. The feeling was one of relish, and a slender sense of loss. The clouds were gathering outside Level 79 of the iconic Twin Towers as I took one last sweep of the breathtaking view. I could still make out, amid the throng of sprouting structures, the one building behind Ampang Park hardly a mile away, where it all started. Karmic or quirk, life does come in full circle.

Retiring isn't supposed to be easy. A typical professional footballer would defer his retirement at least three times before he finally bins his boots for good. A typical Petronas engineer would sign a two-year contract just to feel useful. A typical prime minister would never want to retire. It's best not to get overly emotional because retirement is a two-way thing. There's always a sweet side to anything. I had stacks of unopened CDs and the Economist at home. There's no better time.

I joined Petronas 2 May 1979, a Wednesday. That's 34 years ago, around the time when bell-bottoms and Afro were all the rage. I would've preferred to start anything on the first of something and a Monday, ideally both. No, it's not Chinese astrology or anything like that. It's just that very little seems to happen on the second or on a Wednesday, and absolutely nothing on both.

Landing a Petronas job those days was easier than piece of cake. All you'd to do was apply, turn up for a short interview, laugh along with the interviewers,  and speak reasonable English. Nowadays I heard you've to undergo a half-day waterboarding and face a battery of trick questions just to qualify for another half-day interview to qualify for yet another half-day interview before you're finally rejected for no reason.

Jobs were plentiful during my time. There were only five local universities and they produced about 500 graduates a year to cater for 50,000 jobs. Compare that with 500 universities now churning out 50,000 law and business graduates to fill 500 jobs, you get the idea. A campus friend had five job offers while waiting for his final exam. I mean exam, not exam results.

Nowadays only graduates with at least 3.85 cgpa are called for interviews.  It looks smooth sailing for the high achievers until they discover that almost everybody has 3.85. The schools and the universities and the ministries and the whole country for that matter now are dumbing down the exam questions and grades. I failed my Form Five Chemistry, but my daughter got an A. Our genes are no more than two links apart, so how's her Chemistry grade possible?

Petronas took in people in bulk or crowds of twenty to thirty at one time. It’s not possible to cherry-pick because candidates were in short supply. The HR policy at the time was to hope that half of them would later turn out to be at least half-good. There's a recruitment drive or something for some projects with dull names like MLNG, ABF, SPAD. Ok, delete the last one. So if you missed one interview for a job in a dull project, there's another interview in two weeks' time for another job in another dull project. Life was that good.

To this day I'm still not sure what had actually lured me to Petronas. Youthful bravado? Herd instinct? Cold cash? Probably all three. Created from scratch just four years before, Petronas was an uncharted terrain and a bit of an enigma.  A friend at Shell rolled his eyes when he discovered that I'd joined a government-owned oil company. Oil and government together used to be an oxymoron, just like "fast food" and "German pope". The word "government" would evoke the unmistakable charisma of JPJ, Immigration Department etc. To him a prim and proper oil company had to be one of the horny "Seven Sisters", you know, Shell, Exxon, Chevron and other cissy-sounding types. It's hard to blame him as there's nothing to impress him, certainly not our head-office at ENE Plaza.

ENE was short for Empat Nombor Ekor. And this piece of real estate with the unfortunate moniker was located smack in the middle of a seedy Jalan Pudu neighbourhood, sharing the low lights with an eclectic mix of pubs, massage parlours and a Georgian gaol (or jail, if you insist).  A less literate tourist would mistake us for a gambling den.

It's still early days, of course. Spirits were high and jokes were generous. There's very little movement in and out of ENE to suggest anything remotely ambitious brewing up. I'd already had a firm and paid job at a local bank with a Malay name. Pay wasn’t really top-bracket, but at least this bank had a vision of where it was heading. Leaving this relative luxury to join the masseurs and the jailers was, admittedly, reckless and gungho. What if the fledgling oil firm went under, the way of the sexy sisters? At this point, nobody talked about challenges or trajectories, all I ever wanted was some money to buy cigarettes. Could this be an early career nightmare?

Actually it's a dream move. I was joining a company primed for greatness, a company on the verge of a storybook journey from a homey backwater to a world beater. Fits and starts soon turned fast and furious as nothing could break a company bent on becoming champions. I enjoyed all my thirty years in Petronas, and I'd never trade the experience for anything, not even playing with Maradona (footballer, not Madonna). Even deep in retirement now, my pulses still race whenever I pass our service stations.

Today Petronas is pop culture. Working for the national oil company is suddenly so cool. Twin Towers, Fortune 500, F1, one thousand service stations, what's there to doubt. The HR policy, as expected, has now been completely transformed. It's now more strategic, dynamic and responsive: female staff now retire at 60, men at 55. 

My Shell friend, aha, what happened to him? He’s rich and retired after a successful career and overseas gigs. But his juniors are doing even better: they’ve left Shell to join Petronas Carigali.

It looks easy now, all’s in place. But the global gloom, economic disorder and unforgiving oil dynamics means the action will be just as relentless, if not more. In hindsight, it’s actually easier when I came in because there’s nothing. Nothing could possibly worse than nothing. The game has changed so much. Where we’re now, the only way forward is to buy up Norway.

As the old guards depart, the new warriors meld in. I’ve faith in the younger crop to push ahead with our ambition and agenda, whatever it is now. They aced the interview, remember? Most come with some serious degrees, faux English, good looks. Passion, talent, twitter. Half of them were emotionally and culturally connected with Petronas long before they came in: their mummies or daddies or both worked for Petronas.

Back to 2 May 1979, my first day. As it turned out, Wednesday was wondrous because I didn’t have to work in ENE Plaza after all, not even near Pudu area. I’d to report for duty at the old Domestic Marketing Division (DMD) located at the fourth floor of the old MIDF Building, behind the old Ampang Park. We’d to share the floor with the International Marketing Division (IMD). Both DMD and IMD went along quite well, although the IMD guys tried their best to look, ahem, international.

I was impressed with what I saw that Wednesday morning: open-plan office, low ceiling, typewriters, typewriter chatter, typists, typists chatter, files, more files, leather-like chairs and second-hand smoke. Honest to goodness. No frills, no frippery. I could feel the warmth and welcome as people nodded and smiled as I sheepishly walked past. As I was settling down, I realized how crowded the office was, with heavy pants and big hair-dos taking so much space. The air was the minimum required for all of us to remain clinically alive. One more new guy tomorrow, everybody would suffocate.

All the guys have now retired. Except for two.