The MH Mystery: A Glossary of Troubling Terms and Expressions

My youngest, Sarah, has just started her form four. She came home today with a confession: she likes Chemistry.

Something's wrong with her. But let's leave her for another day because we now have something more urgent: MH370. When I was at Petronas, I'd to do things which were urgent and important first, which admittedly were not that many. We'd paid BCG good money for this highly complex idea, shown in a proprietary perfect square. I know it's hard for you to believe that things can be urgent but not important. But let's not argue. Let's agree that MH370 is urgent and important.

I was glued to Astro Awani for the first two days, keeping abreast every half-minute. Then my tendon tore and my spine sored as little progress was made. But what really broke my back was the sight of a general, or maybe a field marshal,  trooping in, his chest decked out with military medals and ribbons. A curious onlooker would easily mistake Malaysia for Managua.

You could feel the all-round confusion and discomposure. I know jet planes don't disappear everyday, but it's scant excuse for turning a crisis management into management crisis (quoting a clever reporter). The flight turn-back was confirmed after six days. Pilot's last words were modified after three weeks. A goal-line technology used by the English Premier League can decide whether the ball crosses the line in less than half a second. Little wonder Singapore air force parks all its non-hostile foo fighters over our airspace.


As with any crisis or disaster, there's a lesson or two. The management school calls this trick "failing forward". Meaning, we succeed by learning from mistakes. Of course it's a lot nicer if we just succeed, without first making a mistake. This tragic episode has truly challenged my intellectual and cognitive competency, or whatever left of it five years into retirement. The outlandish theories and hypotheses springing out of this unfortunate event are truly disturbing. But I'm also struck by some of the elegant and extravagant terms and expressions bandied about by the experts and the media. Here's nine. I've listed them in a glossary format for easy reading:


1. Assets. The Minister said "all our assets are now being deployed.......". I came across this word "Assets" in my first accounting class. It means, quite simply, what I own. What I don't own is a Ferrari. Seriously, I'm not sure why this dull, catch-all word had to be flogged and glorified to include just about anything used to find the missing aircraft. All sense of urgency and gravity is lost. Assets now includes equipment, ships, men, women, shaman, technically anything that moves, except our two eBay-class submarines.

2. SAR, ACARS, ELT, PC, PSR, PK. Abbreviations are inevitable in any disaster. When Titanic sank, the only abbreviation was SOS.  SAR is not singular of SARS, the deadly flu strain. PK are local university professors coming out of the woodwork to talk tosh. PC is now press conference, personal computers are now called personal computers. 

3. China. Not an abbreviation. How we wish it were. China is Chinese, only worse. They harried, they hounded, they bullied Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian artistes. They kicked up and complained at every turn, alleging cover-up and conspiracy. Lucky thing our government is well prepared, thanks to years dealing with similar tactics used by PKR. I'm not trying to defend Malaysia Airlines, but no airline that carries nuts can promise a zero-accident flight. And the flight was a code-share with a Chinese airline, which quickly disappeared after the plane disappeared. To be fair, all those Chinese relatives wanted was information. You've to understand, these people were so used to getting all accurate information from their transparent government.

4. Corridor. I lived in a hostel hell for eight years. The narrow space outside our dorm is a corridor. Now a corridor means just any space, anywhere, onshore, offshore, airborne. In this case one corridor covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and 15 other countries with "tan", except Canada. Another corridor consists of only Australia. The search team quite rightly plumped for Australia after British spies secretly calculated the plane's location to anywhere within 100,000 km of Perth. They also secretly calculated that it's easier to spell Australia than Kyrgyzstan. The icing is, of course, Australia's maritime skills and know-how, after 100 years of chasing Afghan boat people.


5. Ping. I know what you're thinking: a Chinese Dynasty. That's Ch'ing and Sing. Ping is a signal sent out by a satellite. A dozen signals equals twelve pings, not thirteen as in bread and pastry. You might also detect a faint ping when the army chief opens his mouth to speak.

6. Pinger, Pinger Locator, Chinese Pinger Locator, Towed Chinese Pinger Locator, Chinese Towing Towed Chinese Pinger Locator. A clever wordplay of the words ping and Chinese.

7. Turn Back. It means turn back.


8. Dari masa ke masa. This is an eloquent and poetic expression mercilessly mangled time and again. One newsreader concluded with "kami akan menyampaikan maklumat terkini dari masa ke masa". Another one used "dari semasa ke semasa", and he switched to "dari masa ke semasa" before I switched off the TV. I'm angry because this is not French. I used to hate Baru vs Baharu bollocks, now this. Please, Perkasa or somebody similar, fight for Malay supremacy and settle this issue now. 

9. H. As in MH. Malaysian Malays are a polyglot lot. A Durex survey found that an average Malay speaks three languages and watches at least three episodes of Tanah Kubur. But most Malays and most Malay professors seem to stumble over the letter "H". A pretty Malay TV3 newsreader easily got away with "M Hatch" because she's a pretty TV3 newsreader. Another one repeated "M Hetch 370" 370 times, where "e" rhymes with the famous Imalah in verse 41 of Surah Hud. There's H in Hud. There's no H in H. I think only the Minister got it right, which proves that this country has at least one literate Malay minister.

Pray for MH 370.   

 

All Those Years Ago (Part 2)

My mother didn't know that I'd left the bank for Petronas. She wasn't aware that I'd worked in a bank to begin with, so there's really no point in telling her that I'd switched jobs. Anyway Petronas was still new and unknown. It’s not yet a household name. So when I finally told my mother that I'd joined Petronas, she thought I was joining the Royal Malaysian Navy.

I think Petronas in 1979 was smaller and slimmer than modern-day Petronas Dagangan. Total headcount was less than a thousand, with an Executive Chairman (Tan Sri Abdullah Mohd. Salleh) and a Managing Director (Dato' Rastam Hadi) at the top. The whole company was organized in a vertical, text-book structure: Board, Divisions, Departments, Sections. Nothing complex and convoluted like it is now: Business, Business, Business. Staff titles were downright old-school: MD, Director, GM, Manager, Section Head, Management Executive. And only one MD, and head of Carigali was a mere GM. (Compare that to 120 MDs and 1560 GMs in Carigali now). Presidents or Vice Presidents were quite unheard of in our country. The only President I knew of at that time was US President Jimmy Carter. And President Suharto, of course.

My young and restless heart was all set for a rollicking life among the masseurs and gamblers in Pudu area, only to find out that I'd to report at the old Domestic Marketing Division (DMD) at MIDF building, right behind Ampang Park. If  you're interested, my job title was Management Executive. Not very inspiring, I know, but nobody complained. My starting salary was RM1060. One thousand and sixty. No car, no driver, no girl friend. It's a lot actually  if you compare with my friend in the government. He was paid RM 750 (Don't laugh). A link house at Bangsar Park at that time could be had for about RM80,000 or less. Now it's RM1.2million. A purchasing power parity based on this property alone means my salary was RM16,000 in today's money before GST and toll. Tell me how much is Petronas paying a chartered accountant of England and Wales now?

DMD was actually one of the two Divisions under Marketing Division. The other one was International Marketing Division (IMD). I didn't know a lot about IMD, but my impression was that IMD people were mostly overseas graduates and their parents were ambassadors. On average they dressed and spoke smoother and sharper than the DMD mob. You'd easily mistake IMD for a modelling agency.

Don't get me wrong. IMD guys were a lovable lot, and they're all pleasant, spirited and as confused as we were about where Petronas was heading. One of them was a certain Shamsul Azhar Abbas.

As the name suggests, DMD was largely domestic, you know, Kelantan and the stuff. Under DMD, there were three departments: Sales and Planning, Supply and Distribution and Engineering. No Finance, no HR. The head-office provided the services for free. You're right, life was certainly more fulfilling without Finance and HR in your midst.

As you already know, DMD would later grow and evolve into PDSB and finally PDB, while IMD became Petco and finally (still) Petco. With a shared history and office space, it's only natural for PDB and Petco to strike a very healthy and friendly and lifelong business relationship. Until today Petco continues to supply PDB gasoline, diesel, LPG, jet fuel, and probably jets, all at higher-than-market prices, pocketing plenty of profit. Not bad for a one-time fashion house.   
 

Back to DMD and 1979, Sales and Planning was by far the biggest, and the busiest, department. It had four Sections: Retail, Industrial, Home Fuels, Lubricants and Fertilizer. I was placed in, you've to believe this, Fertilizer Section. Understandably I was initially confused about this fertilizer thing, I mean Petronas had hardly started its oil business and now we were going into farming. Apparently Petronas was planning to build a urea fertilizer plant in Bintulu or somewhere and we were supposed to handle the marketing part. I found out later that urea was (and still is) gas based, so there was indeed a connection. 

The Head of Fertilizer Section, Mohd Sarit Hj Yusoh, was a fun guy. He warmed me up with jokes about Kelantan and Kelantanese. We hit it off  in no time. I was his only staff, so he'd no choice but to like me. Three more guys in bell-bottoms joined me two months later to give him more options. But he left afterwards to start a business and finally found his true calling in politics. Fertilizer and politics, you can only guess which one is more fun.

It's not just our section that got bigger. Scores of rookies with heavy hair-do came in the following months to fill up all Sections.  We had new faces every other week. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before the whole floor would cave in. But this recruiting rage just went on and on, and I'd to quickly learn some man-name matching skills. I said "man-name" because I can't recall any new lady executives coming through, which led me to suspect that the Manager and all the Section Heads were chronically anti-social. 

Before I forget, the Manager was Abd Rahman Abdullah, who lived up to his unimaginative name by being constantly serious and studious and ahead of us. It's a good strategy for an upstart like me to avoid him. I figured he had all the authority to extend my probation to ten years,  so why take the risk. Later I found out that he's a Colombo Scholar (meaning he was really  serious and studious) and he's my secondary school super senior (meaning  he was actually not serious and not studious).
     

Retail Section had the biggest share of the new staff. This was pretty much where all the action was, if you consider drawing imaginary pumps and non-stop talking about service stations as action. The Section was crowded and rowdy with shoulder-to-shoulder jumbo-jet sitting formation. Once you're behind your desk, you couldn't get out. If you wanted to go out to the toilet, everybody in that row had to go to the toilet. 

The Retail Section Head was one Ismail Kamari, who impressed me as a no-nonsense and go-to guy, and a perfect ruler for the Retail empire. Born in boomtown and bilingual Batu Pahat, he's all passion and little patience. Soon enough Retail began to dominate the department. The Section Head was the de facto deputy department manager. And, you know what, he also had a de facto deputy. This de facto deputy to the de facto deputy department manager was a clever-looking LSE alum named Anuar Ahmad.  I heard he was previously a hard-tackling rugby player, so I'd to really choose my jokes when he was around. The rest were, well, just functionaries and foot soldiers like me, mostly local graduates with minimal meaningful experience. We talked and thought mostly in Malay or Javanese but wrote in English. It took me one full day to draft my first memo. My boss thought it was a poem.
 

One major upside about the open-plan office was that there's no communication barrier across the department. The whole staff gelled and joked around freely like one big family.  We took the old mini buses to work and had to endure a full-blast Anita Ward’s disco monster "Ring My Bell" throughout the morning commute. I needed exactly half an hour every morning to clear my head and unlearn the lyrics. I later discovered that only the Manager and Section Heads were married and had cars, which probably explains that anti-social bit.

For the first time in my young life I came across a Float File. It was an evil incarnate and a devil's workshop rolled in one. We'd know what everyone in the department was doing well or not doing well or not doing at all through a "Float File" that was passed around the department. This vile file contained every memo that everybody wrote. The language and tone varied wildly with the writers, and your heart must be strong to read them all. Through this Float File system you'd get found out quickly if you were from Kelantan or if you had Javanese genes.   

Computers were a long way off, everything was either handwritten or typed or plain memorized. You could hear typewriter chatter almost non-stop from end to end. Typists were in great demand and we'd have to jockey and jump queue and beg them and flatter and fete them everyday. The first week, I could hear typewriter chatter in my sleep. Things settled down pretty quickly, all made easier by the now-defunct human right: freedom to smoke in office.

A boss and his boys huddling and puffing away was pretty standard those days. Cigarettes were so cheap with more than fifty brands competing in the market. Smokers in our department decided to buy only Benson & Hedges to minimize supply interruption. The non-buying smokers were unhappy with this one-brand policy which they saw as unfairly restricting their choice. The non-smokers were just unhappy with smokers, whether they were buying smokers or non-buying smokers. It was complicated, those days. 
 

Whoever or whomever or whomsoever had given the name "Sales and Planning" Department must be celebrated for his ambition. There's very little sales to talk about. So it’s planning and more planning days on end. Everybody was busy dreaming up or scratching up something (and smoking, don't forget). The domestic market was firmly controlled by global brands: Shell, Esso, BP, Mobil and Caltex. Shell was the market leader and all service stations were called Shell stations. An Esso station was a Shell station. It's no secret that one of our missions at DMD was to break this foreign stranglehold. Only nobody knew exactly how.

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Note:
I've been trying to recall the names of the 79ers, those who were in Sales and Planning Department in 1979. Due partly to time lapse and partly to memory lapse, I could only manage this partial list. I'll update as and when I stumble on new (lost) names:

1.Abd Rahman Abdullah. 2. Ismail Kamari 3. Hamzah Bachik 4. Padzin Ahmad 5. Maram Mohamad 6. Leong Chung Thad 7. Anuar Ahmad 8. Ibrahim Marsidi 9. Ismail Harun 10. Abd Rahim Ismail 11.Rusli Zakaria 12.Mohd Sabir Harun 14. Syed Izhar 15.Mohd Razali Moksim 16.Shaharudin Bujang 17.Mohd Sabarudin Mohd Amin 18.Ahmad Abdullah 18. Raja Abd Halim 19. Che Yusoff Che Omar 20. Mohd Johari Ismail 21.Awang Osman Awang Jaya 22. Azman Dewa  (Allahyarham)23. Rahim Kamil Sulaiman 24. Baharin Raoh  25. Zulkifli Mohd Ismail 26. Mohd Mazlan Sharudin 

My Chiang Mai Moment

When I proudly proclaimed early last year that we'd be going to Chiang Mai early this year, my two girls Sarah and Aida were less than impressed. I know why:

1. Chiang Mai is not Rome (Italy) or Ottawa (Japan).

2. They still had to live in Subang Jaya.

3. (For Sarah) The trip is after PMR, not during PMR.

But one day before the trip, they're suddenly upbeat. They'd been ploughing the internet, and something's firing them up. The hotel I'd booked had a ritzy, puffed-up name, including the word "boutique". The way the world is organized today, "boutique" means exactly the opposite, or worse. My worry was that these girls had fallen for the hotel website and its clever shots of non-existing swimming pools, smiling Swedes, and airbrushed beds.

We'd to wake well before 4 to catch a 6.55 flight. Anywhere in the world the cheapest flights are the early morning flights. It's airline's revenge on skimping customers. Ryanair is now offering a winter early-bird flight from Maastricht to Milan for 10 Euro (RM 40). Problem is, you don't know where Maastricht is. 

It's one big let-down for the girls as soon as we touched down. It's technically winter in Chiang Mai and they'd expected a cool 20 degrees. It turned out to be only slightly colder than Kg Pandan. But taxis were cheap, plenty and pleasant here. I guess taxis are cheap, plenty and pleasant anywhere if they're not connected to UMNO. Only 120 Bahts (RM12) to our hotel. Hard to believe because, if you're a tourist in KL, it's RM200 from Pavilion in Bukit Bintang to Sungai Wang in Bukit Bintang.

Chiang Mai literally means "New City" or "Kota Baru" because it's only 700 years old. It was once a walled city, and its main entrance was Thappae Gate, which still stands as a  tourist trap and an easy GPS address. The wall had mostly crumbled and its main function now is to separate the old "New City" and the new "New City". If you book a hotel in Chiang Mai through any of the online booking sites (at least 100 of them now), it would indicate the hotel's distance from either Thappae Gate or the night market. If you can't find it, you should panic because you've mistakenly booked a hotel in Bandung.

Our hotel, TJR Boutique Guest House, was in the old city, about 50 m from Thappae Gate (ha,ha), and this area boasted more tourists than locals per square foot. It felt like Bali, but without the dreaded sea. Our rooms were surprisingly spacious and clean, with working aircond and toilet. I guess it's "boutique" and "guest house"  because it had only 13 rooms, it had no lift, and it had a fat receptionist.

So what did we do in Chiang Mai? Nothing much, to be honest. This time we decided not to have a plan. Many empires and enterprises had plans and fell, so why bother. Leaving what's left of our good country for the easy and ancient pace of Chiang Mai should be rewarding enough. We'd be back reenergized to face the toll and tariff.

The most practical mode of transport here is the red tuk-tuk. Only 20 baht per person to anywhere in the city. We took tuk-tuk for sightseeing. It's safer than most taxis in KL.

The night market was, well, a night market. It's massive, almost 2 km long, with the normal night market stuff i.e. handbags, haggling and ugly Manchester United shirts. But it's still worthwhile evening-out for us because at the end of the market, there's a mosque and a "halal street" and halal restaurant. You know what'd happen whenever Malaysian tourists see a halal restaurant.

Elephants and tigers were a big draw in Chiang Mai, especially for tourists from Sweden. Since we're not from Sweden or near Sweden, elephants and tigers were just elephants and tigers. Another tourist hit in this part of the world was the long-neck. To see the long-neck in the flesh you'd to go north, around Chiang Rai, another old city about 200 km away.

We hopped on a Chiang Rai tour for 1000 baht each on the third day. It's a one-day guided tour on a 13-seater minibus. We're the first to board the bus, and it's full-house when another six people joined us. Ah, the Swedes, finally. No, actually I didn't know where they're from, but they're all Caucasians, meaning they're not from Kelantan. The guide was a Thai girl who spoke fluent Thai-English. Her name was Sisi. I knew it's never her real name. My Thai friends all have two names with 24 letters each.

It's a two-and-a half hour toll-free highway and she tried her best to fill us with well-rehearsed jokes, like, she's the most beautiful Thai girl in Chiang Mai. That kind of jokes. There's a casino in Laos, and so it's now Laos Vegas. She went on to explain, in jest, the virility virtues of "tiger pinas" and "cobla" whiskey. It pained me to think how many times she'd to repeat these jokes in the course of her career. So I weighed in with some silly banter to liven up her sad routine. My two girls were visibly upset with me for plugging away with my "jokes", which they thought weren't funny enough and wouldn't go down very well with the (purportedly) cultured Caucasians. Why should I care. For all I knew, these Caucasians could well be Kardashians in deep disguise. 

I'm not sure why it's called Chiang Rai tour because we didn't tour Chiang Rai. We cruised past Chiang Rai on the way to the Golden Triangle, where we took a Mekong River boat ride into the Myanmar waters before crossing over into Laos, where we landed for 20 minutes, more than enough time to decide that Laos is.... louse. Nothing here except for some makeshift outlets peddling Prada and local whiskey. You could buy these fakes in RM. Laos is the second country that accepts Ringgit Malaysia. The first country is Malaysia. Another low-brow joke, sorry. Ringgit is illegal in Myanmar. More joke.

For all its reputation, the mighty Mekong, at least this part, was no more intimidating than Sungai Kelantan. I first heard about this river in my standard five "Ilmu Alam" class. A few years later the itinerant poet-painter Latiff Mohidin eulogized this river in his surrealist masterpiece. "Sungai Mekong, kupilih namamu, kerana aku begitu sepi, kan kubenamkan dadaku ke dasarmu..." and so on. Not sure what it all meant, but it sure took the local literary scene by storm, spawning forgettable river-themed copycats like "Sungai Pahang", "Sungai Ujung", "Kuala Kangsar". Face to face now, it's hard to fathom all the fuss. Anyway, the boat ride was quite an experience, I mean, three countries in less than one hour, epic.

 
On the way back we stopped at Mae Sae, Thailand's northernmost town, right along the border with Myanmar. Somehow I liked this town and its roaring roadside trade. We'd to weave through fresh fruit, foodstuff and the heavenly smell of toasted chestnuts. If there's ever a need for poetry, it should be about Mae Sae. The guide warned us no less than five times to steer clear of Myanmar. Whatever's going on between her and the government of Myanmar, reminding fully-grown and fair-minded tourists five times  in five minutes was certainly over the top. The Caucasians laughed and really loved this "don't go to Myanmar" skit.

Finally, yes, the long-neck. We're taken to a small show village or settlement where the long-neck lived. They actually belonged to the Karen tribe from Myanmar, brought here by the Thais for tourist money. They all had valid visa, just like our Nigerian students. All women and girls here had metal (maybe brass) rings around their necks for good. Their necks certainly looked longer and narrower than my neck. I'm not sure what these people had in mind. It's quite heavy, easily more than a kg when I held it. When I saw a lot of children running around, it just struck me: how they did it, I mean heavy rings and all.

The Caucasians all seemed happy enough to see the long-necks. Nature, culture, whatever.

We spent our last (fourth) day in Chiang Mai seeing the cottage industries. Umbrella, leather, silver, jewellery, porcelain, and silk. We skipped cotton. (The girls' mum who'd been dormant for three days was suddenly inspired). They're all located in one area, just outside the city, quite unlike Malaysia where we have pewter in Ampang, illegal dvd in Subang Jaya, illegal turtle eggs in Trengganu, and politics just everywhere.

We flew back 7 January (Tuesday) morning. It's a sweet three-hour flight, and I was mostly half-awake, pondering back and forth what would be the singular moment, I mean, the one stand-out thing that defined this Chiang Mai excursion. Not easy, because it'd been an improvised affair rather than a seven-sight-a-day tour. In no time we're already at LCCT. I knew she's waiting for us, my little granddaughter Diana. There's a thick crowd as usual. But when she saw us, she just knew. She almost jumped out of his father's heavy arms with pure joy. This had to be my Chiang Mai moment. 

        

This monk can really talk. A used-car salesman turning over?

    

 This is a.........Toilet. It's big, it's beautiful, it's toll-free.

Prada, Prada and More Pradas. Where are the fake devils? 

Despite their long neck, those two guys are not long-neck. They are Caucasian.

A long-neck calling another long-neck. I swear it's a 5s.

The girls smile because they don't like my jokes

Atok, next time you go off without me, I'm gonna sing Glory, Glory Man United.

   

Mandela. Ke Nako.

As the news about Nelson Mandela's death sank in, I was moved to write something about his extraordinary life. Only I don't know exactly what to write. It's almost impossible to write anything that anyone doesn't already know. We've all taken him for granted. If you've read one of the one hundred or more books about him, you're already one up on me. I've not read any.

The day Mandela was released from prison, I was in Japan attending a technical course and visiting Taoist temples in Kyoto. Almost all major Japanese TV stations carried this momentous event (Mandela's release, not my temple tour). It's in high-tempo Japanese, so I couldn't understand a thing. Even Mandela, after 26 years in prison, spoke in Japanese. To make it worse, the telecast was continuously broken by slapstick detergent commercials. But his famous walk of freedom with his wife and supporters would never need any language. I could see that Mandela was just plain, old-fashioned happy to be free after so many years incommunicado. No defiance and no bitterness lurking.

I flew back home the next day. My eldest greeted me, his right hand raised: "Mandela". We hugged and laughed. He did what he'd seen, and repeated a thousand times, on TV. It's easy for his mother to drill him to say Malay-friendly names like Mahathir and Mandela. Next time she should try the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

I think Mandela is one of the most quoted and studied statesmen in modern times. I'd agree that apartheid wasn't exactly modern, but I'd always consider anything after the Second World War as technically modern because that would conveniently include me. Unlike Arsene Wenger, Mandela was never a philosopher. He spoke in clear and regular language. Facebook pages are now flooded with quotes from his famous speeches and writings. For me, the one that stands out was an inspiring foreword he wrote in a book celebrating the life of Diana, his good friend. I don't know which of my two boys had a crush on the late Princess of Wales and bought this book. It's heavier and more expensive than the coffee table, with loads of glitzy and grainy photos of all sizes and shapes. Neither of them would own up. I only read the foreword, all of one page. Mandela wrote simply:

"We can not all be a famous British princess. We can, however, all try to do what we can to insist that every human being is precious and unique."

Well, that's flowing and flawless. I could almost picture the great man at his desk pondering and penning those thoughts.           

 a

Catching Fire

My blog clocked up its 20,000th pageview early last month. With an average of one posting a month, it took me about 14 months to get my second 10,000. I don't have the industry average, but 10,000 of anything in 14 months is very slow. More than 15,000 fake ICs were "issued" in 14 months. Subang Jaya exit funnels out 10,000 cars in one morning.  Only KLIA 2 is slower.

Lots of numbers, and why not? Datuk Zaid Ibrahim racked up 10,000 views in one evening last July when he wrote in defence of the four troubled Malay beauty queen aspirants. According to him, Malaysia is a model democracy and these girls should be free to "maximize their talent". Allowing the word talent a generous metaphorical context, it's hard to argue with the logic because we didn't lift a finger when hundreds of other Malay girls with no talent tried to maximize their talent through Akademi Fantasia.

I knew Zaid. We used to share a swanky 20-bed dormitory forty over years ago. Thing is, he never talked about democracy or beauty queens at the time. So I can only conclude that he wrote the blasphemous piece just to get 10,000 views, which he got, plus 130 comments. Many were up in arms, suggesting that he immediately repent. One comment urged him to perform the Haj because he's rich. If he registered with Tabung Haji today, he should be able to do it in 2048.

My most viewed entry drew a paltry 900, a post on a family trip to Paris and a brush with the gypsies. The relatively high traffic could be due to a picture of a nude castle we visited, one of the 10,400 known castles in France. Unsuspecting online junkies searching for vintage French wines or fake Longchamps or Last Tango in Paris DVD could have been steered into my blog. I don't really know.

A post on Malaysia-Indonesia spats had a surprisingly good outing with 800 views. I know Indonesia has 200, maybe 400, million people, but none of them can speak or read English. They didn't read my blog. So who read the blog? Apparently the Americans. The statistics showed more than 70% of those who viewed this particular posting were from US. Why this abnormal American interest? Even with my strong sense of deduction developed over eight seasons of Monk, I still couldn't unlock this mystery. I finally found the answer recently: White House was hacking into my blog to snoop on both Malaysia and Indonesia. Bugging my blog is a lot cheaper than flying drones.

At this rate, I'd need another 100 years to get 1 million views. Maybe longer. Nowadays nobody read anything. Even if they read, they'd read no more than 10 words at one time. Blogs are losing their edge. Not because Papagomo is in jail, but because tweets and texts are much easier to read. They technically contain no words. David Beckham's recent illiterate tweet to Manchester United fans "Youre team are loosing very bad to Manchester City" was read by two million followers. Art is succumbing to anarchy.

In this state of flux, some bloggers take the easy way out by resigning to writing for themselves or watching Azhar Idrus on YouTube. Like flagging brands, bloggers must reimagine and reinvent to remain competitive. Misleading titles like the above is a good start.

 

Old Boys Weekend : Beberapa Catatan Kenangan

Old Boys Weekend 2013 at Tiger Lane is only a few days past. Is it too early to reminisce? 

OBW13 was my OBW2. My second OBW, sad to say. I’m not from Class of 2011 and 19 years old.  I’m from 71 and 60 years old. It’s just that I showed up only for the second time. My first was in 2010. Where was I before that?

It's a two-day homage to alma mater, a heady mix of one-sided games, grand dinner, rugby, school song, Mr Lau, rugby. And a dandy time to recollect and rerun old jokes and hostel heroics. And rugby.

The AGM was my first, and it's fast, and it's furious. The decibel hit the roof when the constant question of coffers and contributions cropped up. Financially we're under water (what else is new?). Mr P had to become Mr B.  Let's bite the bullet and sell our all-conquering rugby team to a mad Arab. Rebrand it Etihad Tigers or Qatar Queers for all I care.

I'm not sure who's foul, me or the weather. Every time I attended old boys dinner, it rained. Either way, it's a treat. Old boys reunion is a model of equal opportunity: a 60-year old is an old boy and a 20-year old  is an old boy.
 

Dinner and show was the climax, and this time around, it felt grander than my last one. These young people surely knew how to organize. Rain apart, the atmosphere was faultless. The stage and the props and the lights and the sound. Not exactly Montreux, but brave enough.

I’m no music maestro, but I thought the Ghazal fare was gorgeous, especially for a low-hormone audience like me. The Ghazal-pop fusion with a hint of hip-hop was pleasing and delightful. My flagging senses were all fired up. The repertoire romped home with glorious Ribaibaru, Ghazal in Japanese. Nice.

Class of 86 were class.  97 of them stormed this reunion, all clad in loud yellow strip. Or was  it orange? They’re the biggest contingent ever.  Wonder how they did it. (To think that only nine from our class made it this time). Imagine if every batch had the same turnout. We’d have a sold-out crowd of 5,000 old boys!

What else can we say about Khalid Siran? An old boy like no other. A 62 alumnus, he’d never missed even one OBW. His modus operandi warms your heart: he’d travel all the way from Pontian and check in for OBW in the small hours. Let’s all cheer him on. We talked and talked about love, loyalty and friendship. He walked, and showed us how.

The Wangge platter looked like the real thing. But the food station was about one km out, well beyond our reach at the far end. Weak knees and all, who’d want to travel on heavy pitch? We’d to skip Cendol and Satay. Ahmad Darus and Dr Ibrahim had to calm down their wives on the way back.

Empty tables are never a pretty sight. I don’t have the exact number, but I think only 600 turned up for this edition, and the last one, and before that. Some of the Facebook heroes and trolls were missing. Only 10% of total old boys bothered? I don’t have an industry standard for old-boys shindigs, but we should be more ambitious. How about 1000 for OBW14? Even 2000. Ask 86 how they did it, and we’ll do it.

Mr President’s speech? Valiant, passionate, spirited. Except that it’s OBW13, not PRU13. Hahaha.

Finally what passed for music from the lazy and live bands toward the end was slightly more exciting than inter-house debates. Try harder, boys.  

Make no mistake, 93 has done a fine job. It’s much easier to organize a wedding reception. Turnout is a perennial problem. Maybe we’ve to reimagine OBW, the concept, the program, the communication, to ramp up the turnout.

Less than 10% from my Class of 71 showed up. At this rate, we're Crass of 71. I’m equally guilty, I know. Not sure what can really motivate older old boys like us. Now that our age starts with 6, our train ride to Ipoh is 50% off (only RM16 one way, cheaper than luggage on Air Asia). Hamid is ready to transform his Ipoh weekend retreat into Hamid Homestay for OBW. One of us can be the head-honcho to round up all of us. Come on, let's crash OBW14!

Ah, before I forget, Yuzer, your stand-up skit about a fat Kelantanese at New York airport just fell over. You’ve to be a Kelantanese to tell that joke. Your paid-by-Colgate my-teeth-can-crunch-ice routine is more hilarious.     

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.