1985 and Dee C Lee

1985 was a great year for me.

Specifically the end of 1985.

By then I had finished my study after four toiling years at Monash, and by early December, we would have gotten our results. In hindsight, we knew our student life were coming to an end.

In 1985, got to know this great lady. I thought I was in love with her voice.

And her song.

In an era where there was no Youtube, we had to wait for Australian Countdown perhaps, and other limited musical programs on the telly to sample and watch the great video clips of the 80s. So it was always a pleasure to watch her on my B&W tube.

And not worry about study at all.

While Whitney Houston released her beautiful ballad in early 1985, Dee C Lee chose the right time to release them after I had finished my exams.

I thought her voice and song were a perfect match - a match made in heaven.

Twenty seven years later, I am still in love.

(The song and her voice lah!!!)

The Intern & A place to dye for

This entry is obviously not about Monica Lewinsky, even if she was perhaps one of the more famous - or rather infamous, intern. And while the title sounds heavy, again like all my other entries, I don't write about heavy stuff here in this blog.

It is supposed to be light reading.

The summer before my final year at Monash, I was required to take up (summer) internship in order for me to gain some valuable working experience before my actual fling in the job market. Then most universities in Australia were a bit lenient on the duration, unlike many universities in Malaysia today - we were only required to take up to 12 weeks of internship.

The Menzies Building at Monash's Clayton Campus.

While I was interested to work in a Mat Salleh company in Australia, but since bapak had just passed away in a couple of months ealier (August 1984), I thought it would be wise for me to find a job in Malaysia so that I could return home (again) in December. (I had paid for my own way to come back in August 1984 for bapa's funeral, so that year I was back at home twice.)

There weren't that many choices, I guess. I could try the many plants mushrooming out in Terengganu, but I would not want to be away from home at all this time around, so not even the lure of the black gold was enough to entice me to leave my cocoon. Taiping, however, did not offer too many alternatives. No heavy industry in this sleepy hollow. With MARA's help, I managed to secure an internship at Taiping Textiles (TAIFAB) in Kamunting. It was the best option for me. It was perhaps the most well known textile company in Taiping, and the premier factory in Kamunting Industrial Estate.

I guess nama pun dah estate, what do you expect?

Then a local entity had just acquired the shares of TAIFAB from the Taiwanese.

I didn't really care where I would be doing the internship, to be honest. I just wanted to make sure that I fulfilled the requirement for me to graduate as an engineer. Nothing more, nothing less. I did not treat the internship as the most important thing that would make or break my study or future career. It is not like a lifetime employment, or choosing a girl for marriage. You can't afford to make mistake. In this case, three months, and I would be gone.

At Taifab, I decided to work in the lab as opposed in the production line. I thought I could learn better at the lab, as I would have time to reflect on my work, and since I knew next to nothing about making textiles.

The great thing about working there was that I was fetched to work by the company's van. No bas kilang for me - it was managers' van kilang instead. The managers have their own company transportation, much as the factory girls do with theirs, so it was a privilege for me to be able to join them. It was easy to impress the impressionable student then. I was thankful for the transportation even if it were not a BMW.

Like many wide-eyed interns before him, the internship did give me insight into working life and what the future held for me.

The funny thing about working there that until today I could not comprehend was the fact that everything (except the production floors) would shut down at 5.15 pm. Sharp! By 5.10 pm actually, everybody would be at the front gate, including the managers and the factory girls. You will see the blue busses lining up the street in front of the factory ready to ferrying the workers back to their homes in the neighbouring suburbs.

At 5.15 pm, the guard would open the gate and the thousands of workers would rush to their busses and leave the premise. 

Mind you, this included the managers. Obviously as an intern, I would not have any choice, but to follow with the flow, though then without any commitment, I would not disagree with this policy. It is more like I vehemently agreed to this wholeheartedly.

I have never seen anything like that since. It would be unthinkable to fathom leaving work for home right on time, like you were a clock watcher. I abhor that to be honest.

But I guess that's life then in the (production) factory.

Later on in life, I found out that there is such policy called OA5 policy. Funnily I learned this prior to my MBA days and I even introduced this concept to my management class at UIA - whether anyone has taken it or not, I am not sure to be honest. OA5 is a policy introduced by Dilbert in the classic The Dilbert Principle.

The key to management, according to Dilbert (Author Scott Adams) is knowing what's fundamental to success and what's not, for a company. "The goal is to get the best work out of the employees during office hours and make sure they leave work by five o’ clock. Finishing by five o’clock is so central to everything that follows that I named the company OA5 (Out at five) to reinforce the point. If you let his part of the concept slip, the rest of it falls apart."

The primary objective is to make each employee as effective as possible within the time frame of the operating hours of the company. I tried doing that in the early days of operating my own company in 2007, but I found out that Malaysian workers have a peculiar way to reacting to such privilege.

They tend to abuse it. One such person was a habitual late comer, and yet she would still be leaving at 5! Luckily she is no longer working for me.

I guess long before the arrival of the The Dilbert Principle, one Malaysian company was already practicing it; the only thing is that no one studied it formally and wrote a book.

One other thing that I noticed there is the very pittance salary paid to the workers. If I am not mistaken, on average, they were paid RM220 per month, while I, as the intern, was paid RM300. Mine was pittance too, but I was on full scholarship even when I was back in Malaysia, so the internship allowance was just pocket money for me.

And I don't have to pay for my room in Taiping.

It is a pity and honestly even in 1985, RM220 would not take you anywhere, and unlike me, the workers have no other income. (As a comparison, as stated in my previous entry, I was paid A$420 a week or A$1680 per month, and I was a labourer. On the other hand, workers at Perak Hanjoong were paid about the same amount RM200-RM250, depending on their qualification.)

But then again, that's the discrepancy of salary of workers in Malaysia. There was, and still is, a big gap on workers and management salaries.

Life in the lab was reasonably good. All the lab technicians were girls/ladies, so the lab manager and the intern were surrounded by the gals all the time. Basically our tasks were to come up with the proper dye composition to be used in the production line depending on customer requirements. 

The lab technicians with the intern squeezed at the
back, in the dye laboratory at Taiping Textile,  in Kamunting. A place
to dye for, so to speak. ;-) I have forgotten all their names except perhaps for Maria.
Nice people, they all were.  Can you see the sewing machine on the left?
It is a textile company, obviously we have to use them in our work there,
but I normally would leave it to the gals to use them! ;-)

Yes, we can make your clothing water-proofed too, if you asked for it. And I have forgotten how to make the army uniform of celorang-celoreng.

I have really enjoyed my time there. The gals were helpful. They knew a lot more than the intern obviously, but would not qualm about assisting him. Being an overseas student helped a lot too in my socializing with them. The manager, a Malaysian Chinese, was every willing too to ensure that I got the most from my internship. Three months (make that two actually) was way too short to be learning much about the textile industry, but I did learn about the working environment - a whole world away from life as a student.

Honestly, I was just fulfilling part of the requirement to graduate at Monash. The internship was not meant to be a be all and end all in the grand scheme of things in life. Thirty more years of working life awaited me then; so the value of the three month summertime internship was much less that what was perceived by many. I disagree with the current (local) university practices of asking their students to take up 6-8 month internship which would form part of their semester.

It is not like this internship was added to the duration, so I am not sure whether the students have a good foundation since their time at school are cut short.

I completed my internship in February 1985, went on to complete my final year that year, and since returning in 1986 I had never returned to Taiping Textile again. I have only worked in the heavy industry since those days. It was my own choice. I thought it was not as much fun working in a covered area, and thought working in the the sun and the rain would be a lot more healthier. 

Taiping Textiles did leave me with a lasting impression of the working environment, and a few key points central to management.

The value of education; and the hardship of earning a salary for the general workers, and hence the need to have a minimum wage for all workers in Malaysia. Obviously I am sure no one gets paid RM200 anymore, like many were in the 80s, but I am reasonably sure whatever they get paid in 2010 aren't that much better.

In 2010, the maids are paid RM400, double than the factory workers of 25 years ago.

But nothing has changed really, if you were to consider inflation.

It's a pity, isn't it? Rakyat didahulukan?

EPILOGUE


I think I am going to be a lot of brickbat from a certain professor on my view of the current practices of internship by our universities. Take me on, prof! ;-)


What else did we learn today?


Minimum wage and Out at Five.


Enough lesson for the day!

The Greatest Road on Earth

PROLOGUE

This is the greatest road on Earth in as far as spectacular views are concerned - the road from Torquay to Port Campbell and Warnambool through Anglesea, Lorne and Apollo Bay in the Australian state of Victoria.

I do feel that the honour given to this road is more than justified, and to be honest, there are only two places on Earth that I would not mind retiring to due to its beauty. Actually one of these places is probably not a suitable as a retirement town due to its harsh winter, but the other one probably offers a mild winter.

In fact, during my second trip there in 1986, when I passed by this by during a full moon, it had crossed my mind that I would not want to return home as the view from this road looked so spectacular and so peacefully romantic during a moonlight night. But of course with the sight of Mak at the back of the car, that feeling disappeared as fast as the moon being covered by the clouds that night. (I could not tell her then I would want to stay on in Australia. She would be broken-hearted.)

Understandably, we were by the seaside with good breeze dominating the pleasant March sky in the Southern hemisphere.

We had taken this great road on the way back from Ballarat after a day's expedition at this famous mining town at Sovereign Hill. Obviously in the late 1800s, this was the town that triggered the great Victorian Gold rush, and we had our hands on it in 1986.

I guess, I would not be writing in this blog, had I made a fortune that year in Ballarat. I guess I was in the wrong century, and at least a century too late to participate in the richest alluvial gold rush in history.

I present to you - The Great Ocean Road.

Greatest Road on Earth

This stretch of road hugs the coastline, very tightly, I must tell you. It offers the most scenic ocean view and the surrounding area, and hence the name the Great Ocean Road.

According to the Wiki, The Great Ocean Road is a 243 km stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia between theVictorian cities of Torquay and Warrnambool.^[1] The road was constructed to provide work for returning soldiers and dedicated as a Memorial to those killed in the First World War.^[2] It is one of Australia's great scenic coastline drives.

In my typical unexaggerated writing, I would claim it as the world's most scenic coastline drives. ;-)

In December 1985 - perhaps one of the better years of my life, for the simple reason that nothing untoward had happened that year, compared to the prior three consecutive years (1982, 1983, and 1984) and of course, it was the end of my student life after four toiling years at Monash, the four of us decided to reward ourselves with a drive alongside the south-eastern corridor of Victoria.

Kinda a victory jig, I guess, for four engineering students before our homecoming - from right, my housemates Rosli Abdul Hamid aka Sli (now VP at Malakoff), yours truly, Parid Sulaiman (now big shot at Intel), and Khairuddin aka Din Kecik. Another of our friend joined the journey to complete the group.

That's us before the start of the journey at our house at Hilltop Avenue in Clayton North. Three electrical engineering graduates in their jeans with their chemical engineering counterpart in his slack. One thing that we were proud of ourselves then was for the fact that all of us completed our undergraduate engineering course without having to repeat a single year, which was quite rare at Monash during those years.

Typically, a student would have to repeat at least a year during the four-year course. Sli obviously was the star in our group having graduated with with a second class upper. If I am not mistaken, all of us graduated with at least an Honours degree.

So we rented a Mitsubishi Magna - mind you that's not the Proton Saga ok, but it sure looks like one. (So now you know how Malaysian the Proton Saga was. May be as Malaysian as the Bangladeshi pendatang tanpa izin?) Unfortunately this writer did not possess a valid driving license by then (after failing four driving tests in Perth four years earlier), so he had to take a back seat.

We headed South-West towards Geelong, where most Malaysian students studying architecture would live and study (Deakin Uni) and then off to Torquay, where the journey on the greatest road on Earth would begin.

It was slow drive to Apollo Bay via Anglesea and Lorne and it was done on purpose. We were view hunting to be honest. Armed with an Olympus SLR that is still in working condition today, we would stop over at strategic location to take pictures. As we had started very early in the day, the early morning weather was not cooperating as it was cloudy, so the initial pics tend to be a bit dreary with the grey cloud. But as the day progressed, blue sky started to emerged from behind the clouds and presented with our picture taking opportunity like never before.

Of course, with us being students on a limited budget, we had brought food from home to supplement the crackers and tidbits that we bought from the grocery shop. I am sure nasik goreng with ayam goreng would be our menu that day.

Typical student menu I guess those days, may be with telur goreng or sausages thrown in. And, yes no Maggie Mee for us, for we were more sophisticated then than to drown ourselves in that non-nutritious meals.

To me, the towns along this scenic route are aptly named - I love the name Anglesea, and Lorne; they sound so female and hence romantic, while Apollo Bay sounds exotic to this part of the world. Warnambool on the other hand is as Australian as the kangaroo and the koala bear. As I have mentioned earlier, the road practically hugs the coastline, at times precariously. While I don't remember us hanging on to our dear lives inside the car, we were often left breathless admiring the view.

Caption: The Australian Boys' Band from the 80s, with the lead singer in the middle ;-)

It was non-stop to be honest. Every other minute, one would get a picture-postcard scenery. In the end, the adventure is in the journey itself, while the destination (Port Campbell) would be just a distant memory. We would remember the coastline outside this town better than the town itself.

It was a journey to nowhere to be honest, and nowhere is where the heart was.

Obviously it has all kind of corners that we Malaysians would love to give name to - selekoh korner baring, selekoh siku, or 90 degree turn etc. The only corner you would not find here is Hell's Corner. That's reserve for a turn at Mt Buller, but that's another story.

If the muslim world has 25 Apostles that we have to know, Great Ocean Road has twelve, which would be the highlight of the journey. It was not originally named that way; the biblical name was chosen to attract tourists to this area, obviously the name refers to the twelve followers or disciples of the prophet Isa AS or Jesus. Even without the fancy name, I am sure we would have been attracted to come that day.

The two pics below were taken from the point as shown in the above pic. If you face the ocean, to the right is the multiple rock formations and to the left, there are two. I am not sure if one can walk right to the edge. May be not.

These two pics (above and below) were taken in 1985 from the same location, one to the left and one to the right if one were to face the sea. Of course the picture above is perhaps the most photographed of the limestone stacks.

At Port Campbell National Park however, the Twelve Apostles refer to the collection of limestone stack protruding out from the sea off the shore of Port Campbell. Don't start counting, ok! You would not be able to count to 12. Obviously it was the work of the ocean waves, winds and other forces of nature, eroding the cliff over thousand of years and to be honest, I am sure it goes on till today. I am not sure how long these limestones would last to be honest.

No, that's not Anwar Ibrahim. That's me in 1985 in front of the Twelve Apostles. As I have said, by this time, the sun had come out and it was quite a pretty day with blue sky. But obviously the chemical composition of the printed photo could not last long, and hence the yellowish tint in all the pictures taken in 1985.

A number of them has fallen over entirely as waves continually erode their bases. I was made to understand that a 50-metre Apostle collapsed in 2005, like in the picture below. The erosion is estimated to be at 2 cm per year, and I guess over 25 years since I was there, 50 cm or two inches of limestones would have been eroded away.

These two pictures (above and below) were not taken by me as you would notice the different tint in both pictures.

And this is me and Din Kecik. Din was not a housemate - unlike Parid and Rosli, but he frequented our house quite a bit. Apparently he married a gal from my Taman in Taiping as I last saw him during the Raya prayer there, but I have lost contact with him since then.

I think the rock formations add colours to the already scenic route. In fact, with them, this route not only becomes spectacular, but also majestic. I would recommend anyone to go and see it before all of them collapse into the sea.

Beyond the Apostles, you could find London Arch which you would never find in London and the Lock Ard Gorge. If I vaguely remember, there was even a London Bridge, no?

We are looking at the Bass Strait here I believe which forms part of the Indian Ocean. We were not quite at the Southern most part of continental Australia - almost though.

To be honest, I would love doing this all over again, this time around with the kids. It would be a lovely expedition for all of us. I just could not wait for Air Asia to fly to this city I used to call my second home.

To me, I had driven to many locations - and I am sure many of you had done so yourself, there are many drives that I love so much. The journey around the Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada and the journey in Colorado up the Rockies would be high up there in my list.

But for the ocean view, the cliff and the gorges, you can't compare the drive along the Great Ocean Road.