DOCUMENTED WORLD – My Journey
It all started in a small village in Salor, Kelantan. By 1947 we all walk 2 miles down a dusty road
to attend our first year in school.
Sometimes you ride pillion and on other days there is a trisha. But
there never was a motor vehicle for us to ride on until we were in Std 2 when
an occassional bus would take villagers to Kota Bharu town 6 miles away. The
buses were not unlike the jeepneys of Manila; entrance and exit was through a
rear step. Life start at 0500 in the morning
darkness, and we move about assisted by kerosene lamps. Toilet is a basic trap in the ground affair
and there is always ample supply of water .
There were 5 wells in our village of 20 houses; all 3-generation
houses. They have since grown to 100 or
more houses. Fuel to boil morning coffe was derived from rubber woods, stockpiled under the house. Rambutan wood piles were reserved for barbeques and burning irons. Coconut shells madeupf the rest of fuel materials.
We were all well shod with clogs when moving from house to
well. You dare go barefooted only in the day.
Only the uninitiated move about at night barefooted in the night. At school outdoor activities include attending
to the needs of flower and vegetable
plots allocate to your team. We were given
weekly guided tours around our
school to watch birds butterflies and identify newly planted vegetation flower
bearing or otherwise. As for social
groups, we have friends who joined the boy scouts, cubs or girl guides; these
groups regularly attend picnic activities in the woods just outside the school perimeter fence.
In year 5 we most of
us moved to an Engllish school whilst the rest stayed on to complete Darjah 7
of the Malay School, the launching pad for work-life. There was no std 8, and 9 which is the equivalent
of present-day forms 4and 5. Our first
and second year in the English school was termed as Special Class 1 and 2, and
our third year found us in Form 1 . This is when we merged with those that
started primary school beginning Primary 1 and ending Primary 6. It is interesting to mention that our first
year in English school is all about spelling, writing, reading, and singing.
The teaching of the foundation of grammar was based on a 15 page Oxford English
Course Book 1. The story evolves around aman, a pan , a Gopal Singh, a Chong
Beng and a Haji Hassan. The setting is around a house and a kitchen, the writer
knowing very well that there are houses and kitchens everywhere. There was no
mention of bicycles and cars, and electric posts as not every body then
was associated with those items.
The journey through secondary school marked the beginning of
a more interesting journey. Here we
learned about detention classes on Saturdays. No problem on attendance. Every
student is within cycling distance from their homes.
The journey through secondary school takes me from Form 1
to Form 5. In the process, we all
participated in many extra curricular team groups such as Cadet Corps, Boy
Scouts, Geography Club, Photography
Club, Nature Study Club, and History
Club. All the clubs were
sponsored by the school, with an appropriate teacher nominated to guide the
club members. I remember the Photography Club help members to buy cameras
(about RM20.00 each), and after a short half hour club outing, the films were
sent to town to be developed as negatives.
Then we members print our own pictures using the schools photographic
development room. The clubs teach us
something we thought was strange. The Secretary must maintain the members register; the treasurer
records moneys received and spent.
All these records are kept in a fresh 20 page school exercise book. The clubmaster and even the Headmaster checks
these books regularly. All documents
such as meeting agendas, minutes of a meeting are never more than one
handwritten page each. { Perhaps it was
here too a few students learned to smoke in the toilet. Their first cigarette was during one of the
cycling trips to the beach about 5 miles away.}
Our best picnic programme was to Pulau Perhentian, and
another more prestigious outing was to Kuala Lumpur with a free ticket and in
School Cadet Uniform. This was on the
occasion of The Declaration of Independence on 31 August 1957.
By end 1959 school days were over . I taught as a temporary teacher for 5 months
before reporting to UTM Kuala Lumpur in June 1960 for an Engineering course.
This marked a sudden changeover from a guided life at home
to a hotel life, but not for long. Within a month or so I learned to guide
myself. We did things that do not require much money to be spent. There were societies to keep us busy outside
study hours. There was our Students
union, and other affiliated clubs such as body building club, sports club, and
music club. We organized concerts and soon inevitably, various anniversary
dinner and dance sessions. Now life
outside lecture theatres and library sessions, was in full swing. As a club officer in a sports and social club
I had some exposures in organizing inter hostel competitions . And Hari Raya CNY, Deepavali and Christmas
soon became serious affairs that require detailed planning; otherwise there would not be enough girls to dance
with. By the beginning of year 2 many
students were already dating. [You could
see from their faces that one or two fellow
students had been jilted. One coud hear
stories of near fist fights] . In the
meantime academic studies fared well, what with midnight candles after lights
off.
The engineering study lands us in practical engineering work at
various engineering bodies. I chose to be trained at Radio Malaysia (now RTM)
and every year we spent 2 months practical training at RTM Kuala Lumpur. This provides a good exposure to work ethics,
and actual work environment. We mixed with all including work mates who
run businesses . (Soon I got to bid for shares in a mining company.) It was at RTM that I first learned that
government engineers are capable of building up a complete
audio/telecommunication system, from a bare building to a completed operational studio system. Before a bare room is ready,
stores were ordered from all over the world from companies such as AMPEX,
Phillips etc. Cables were laid, racks
and consoles were fabricated, and soon preamplifiers, amplifiers, routers and
switches were slotted in. Microphones and lights soon follow suit. Our in house
carpenters soon pad all rooms with sound proof material, and hardly 3 months
later the sound studios were
broadcasting programmes. And
this facility will not be handed over to users until the “as is drawing”
is ready and the commissioning protocol has been carried out and the agreed
performance criteria has been met . The contract document stipulates for this. One could see the face of the Project Manager
when work is completed and handed over to the users. This is a major lesson in contract management that I learned .
These sound broadcasts were channeled by normal telephone lines to transmitters in
Kajang, Ipoh, Penang, Kota Bharu,
and Singapore. The control room in Ipoh
further channels the programmes to Kota Bharu by further use of telephone lines . Back in Kuala Lumpur, as a back up, RTM too set up a transmitter at the top floor
of the Studio for direct transmission by microwave to her own transmitter in
Kajang. This was my first exposure to
telecommunication networking in the year
1960-1963. You manually plug in your earphone to those towns in your network and you can converse or
record anything; and each of these
control centres are able to connect any
caller to any studio room in its particular RTM station. (there were written rules on usage of these
lines though, otherwisw there will be misuse of free long distance calls). These intertown telephone lines were rented from Telekom
Malaysia, just as present day Telcos rent lines (or channels of multiples of
thousand lines) from Telecom Malaysia. Nothing has changed much in the
technical and commercial concept of renting
government telephone lines.
After
one year full time in telecommunication environment, I answered a call by the Government for more people to join the military.
I joined the Army and soon by 1965 found myself in Tawau amongst a few thousand commonwealth forces. Henceforth beginning in Tawau I spent 10
years in practical engineering in a number of works facilities around the
country, and after a spell in post
graduate studies in USA in 1975, I turned to the new job of regional control of
the maintenance of army equipment. . The
I moved on to my second 10 years in engineering My first headquarters for this new job was
in Kuching. Those years in hands on
engineering gave me much exposure to resource management , that includes
audit and training of skilled resources, and management of funds and stores.
(Basically it is budgeting with a full engineering picture
of your equipmen fleet, their life expectancy, the need to repair or
renew and how much money are you willing to spend or your boss was willing to
give you)(Trained personnel tend to help the Army save money through less
downtime).
Soon my second 10
years was spent in various Headquarters to be in a various teams to juggle
resources and training/retraining.
Training is always number one priority in the Army or any Army for that
matter. This second 10 years was the
most hectic. You sit on various
technical investigation planning boards, even on Boards of Enquiry (a legally
formal body) . I myself have to go for more training locally and in UK for
latest approach to design philosophy, maintainability,
productivity. We call this the middle management period. And the third 10 years found me sitting in
Ministry of Defence doing contract specifications, consultancy as well as
policies. The 3 x 10-year working span really document
itself as ready for other jobs (even
though the Army thinks it was time to retire after 30 years service.)
By 1992 I landed with a civilian job, and a Military pension
to keep me moving.
First five years I
found myself selling steel casings,
marine survey services, cathodic
Protection services, and off-shore vessel
hire services to oil drilling companies in Malaysia and Vietnam. The oil companies taught me a good lesson in
contract execution. In a tender system
bidding amongst oil companies, bidders are required to additionally state in not more than half page, the most one
page, as to who by persons name and
company name were likely to execute any and all parts of the orks/services
within the contract bidded , giving phone numbers and
office/residence addresses, bankers name, shipping names and mill or factory
names. Beautiful, I call this. All these
are read back to you at the point of
contract award.
In the next 5 years I moved to a new business line – to ICT
and line communication, in short “telephony” . This is in fact related to my
first job, that of sound and telecommunication engineering .By this time I ran
my own business. I did my own supplier survey, then product design , cost it to include contingencies , and fought
for a good commissioning protocol. All
these preparatory documents were put to
the business committee, to be endorsed and filed. You refer to it if contract execution costs run into trouble. After works were
delivered Delivery Note/Invoice were
signed by both parties to certify works
and services were delivered satisfactorily. This delivery note is the most
important legal document
And now my third 5 year plus of veteran life is spent
towards Toastmasters programmes. It is a journey within the greater
journey. Ever so often you refer to
notice and Agendas. But most important of all you meet people in order toget
things done. The right way. The way that
was agreed upon. Otherwise we will lose direction and nothing is achieved
