My First Posting

I reported duty to Mr Cheong Chup Lim , who was the Assistant Director General of Planning. He told me I''ll be sent to Urban Drainage Unit which was headed by an Australian Consultant engaged under the Pahang Tenggara Town Draiange Planning and Design Project. Later I learned that the Unit was also to handle urban flood mitigation projects and to publish an Urban Drainage Planning and Design Manaual. The Consultant had two engineers stationed in the Unit, Peter and Kenneth V. Lewis. After a few months Peter went back to Australia and did not come back again. Kent Lewis was with us untill 1978. Besides Peter and Kent Lewis, there were three local engineers: Mr Lau Kim Paik. the late Mr Lynder and the contract engineer Mr Lim Peng Weng.. A few days later my University classmates Chang Siew Hong joined me but he left to join City Hall about two months later. Chew Chai Huat and Ekuang Ngan who were graduates from Singapore University reported to the Unit about a month later. Liew Chin Loong graduated from UK joined us about three months later. Liew and I later became brother in law. How it happened will be an interesting story to be told later. About a year later Seet Wai Lin and Ng Cheek What came in . By then Mr Lim had finished his contract with the deprtment and left to join local council of Penang Island; whereas Mr Lau and Mr Lynder who were senior engineers in their early thirties were promoted to assume more responsible posts. Kent Lewis left the Department in 1978 when he finished his contract.t. Thirty years later we had a reunion in 2005 with Kent Lewis who came to take part in Ironman Race in Pulau Langkawi.

For those of us just starting the career we could only start off with motor bike as a mean of transport except Liew who bought a second hand car not long after joining the Department and he was also the first to get a steady girlfriend, Teh Ah Yeow a fresh technical assistant, who later became Mrs Liew and my sister-in-law i.e. sister of my wife. Huh! interesting ! right? How it happened? I shall narrate it in future posting provided my wife, Kim, give the green light. What I can tell you now is that the way we met is like those you used to see in Hong Kong movie. OK I'll stop hear.

In 1977 I applied to do a postgraduate study in Delft, Holland. During my Chinese New Year vacation i.e Jan/Feb 1978 I'd to cut short my holiday in Penang to rush back to KL as I received a telegram from the Department wanting me to sign certain documents as I'd been nominated for the postgraduate course mentioned. When I went back to the office the next day I realised that I was only put as a reserve to Zamali who was one year my junior in terms of service. I think Phuah was in the training division and he would know the rationale of the selection. I never asked him about it until today. Of course I did not get it. Few months later in the same year I got my promotion to act on a senior time scale post. This was the second fateful turn of event that changed the course of my career life. Before this I was contemplating to leave government service after the three years mandatory service with government department. But now with this promotion I gave myself another two years. If I got my next promotion to superscale 'G' I shall be contented to stay and serve the Department until mandatory retirement age of 55. During that time my senior who were on supersclae "G" had owned car and house and I thought that was good enough for me. Looking back now this was not a very ambitious target, right? Anyway I really got my second promotion to act on superscale 'G" in early 1980. With this two promotions I started to commit myself to get married , pay for downpayment for house and and get car loan and continue to support my family and siblings. With theses commitments I became very cautious wanted to venture out in the private sector. In addition I was enjoying job satisfaction for being entrusted with great responsibility: I became a state director at the age of 36 which was considered very lucky. By the time I realised I had hit the ceiling and wanting to go into private sector, I was in a very awkward position as I technically became not so hands on and yet not so well connected to get job for any company. The only wayout for me if I wanted to advance myself was to add value and create opportunities for myself. The story is getting too long I shall stop here until the next posting

Where shall I start? Ok may be I shall share with you how I ended up as a government servant until I reached mandatory retirement age of 56. I really "sold" myself to the government.

I graduated with civil engineering degree from University Malaya in 1975. At that time we, engineering  graduates have no choice but to serve in government department/agency for 3 years unless we could prove that we could not get any offer  from the government departments/agencies.  The most popular government department that most of us like to join was Public Works Department. But during the year I graduated, PWD would only take in scholarship holders. So for me PWD was out. Department of Irrigation and Drainage was then the first to offer me an attachment post with an allowance of Rm500 or was it Rm 550. Those days attachment post was offered as an interim measure to get us to start working while waiting for our final year result. Incidentally DID was not new to me because I was having my third year practical training in DID at Sg. Besar ,Selangor. The first day I came back to campus after finished the practical training I met a classmate Tan Ah Chye . We were exchanging notes about our training experience and I still remembered vividly that I told him 'even if I've to die I would never join DID". Never did I realized that this was my first lesson in career life : " always leave room for yourself  to maneuver". There was nothing wrong in the Department. It was just that the nature of civil engineering works undertaken by DID then was not that 'challenging' to me. I dreamt to get involved in the design and construction of tall buildings, dam, highway and gigantic structures.

 As I was eager to join my elder brother and sister to help out my family of 11 siblings and one of my younger brother would be depending on me to support him in his tertiary education very soon, I quickly grab the offer. In the first  year  while waiting for the Department to offer me the permanent post, I had two opportunities to work for Housing Development Board (HDB) in Singapore. In the first instance, HDB offered me a hydraulic engineer post and I turned it down because I was still harbouring on the idea of becoming a structural engineer. In the second interview I managed to convince HDB to offer me a structural engineer post. At this fateful moment DID finally got through all the bureaucratic  processes to offer me a permanent post. For whatever reason I remembered it was not a very difficult decision for me to accept the DID's offer because Malaysia was still my choice to develop my career. If you asked me had I ever regretted taking such decision, I can truthfully and without hesitation to tell you that I was not until early nineties when things had changed and I  could see then that I had reached the ceiling in the Department although there were still a few levels to go. Regretted not because I did not join HDB. Regretted because I had given my best years of my career life to the Department and got myself caught in a situation that I had not much market value then outside the Department. ( I shall explain this in future ). Trying to get myself out of this despair situation, I enrolled myself for a part time MBA course which I managed to sit for all the examination except the course project. At this critical moment, I was transferred back to Head office in KL for reason only known to my boss who later apologized to me privately in his room for such a move though still keeping the reason of transfer to himself. Out of curiosity I wish he can tell me the reason one day although nothing can be changed now. 

I think I am fated to cross path with HDB. Never did I expect that some twenty over years later  in 2003/2004 we met again but this time we were fighting it out over the issue of Pulau Tekong Reclamation, which was quite an experience. Unfortunately i could not write on this matter very much as i might unknowingly divulging official secret information.

I'll continue my story in the next posting.