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.
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