Seeking Post: Fly Swatting Specialist!

I do come across people who complain that the work that they do is much too difficult to do and they need to take rest off work. Over the years I have been desensitized by these moans that I just tell myself, “You think my job is easy?” – talking to sluggards like you!When I was working in Klang, I encountered many plantation workers negotiating with the Medical Officers to squeeze out as many days of medical leave as possible. Initially, I thought that these people were plain lazy. I found later that it was not so straight forward. After working many long weary hours, they were paid ‘peanuts’.  A rainy day means no work and no pay. If they fell ill, they have to take a long bus trip to town – Awake at 4am –preparing house chores to catch the 5.30am bus to reach town to collect a number to see a medical officer who starts work at 8am; they will depart from the hospital close to 12noon. By then, they could not go back to work and they lose a day’s pay. If the worker managed to produce a Government Hospital Medical Leave Certificate, they would be entitled to a full day’s pay which is better than nothing. A tough life but isn’t everybody’s? Even the skiver has to think hard to dodge from work. Ask anybody and everyone will say that his job is tough- the bricklayer – tough; waiter and those in the hospitality service –tough;  the businessmen – tough- because he cannot get a car park when he gets to the bank; those in the medical services –tough because of increasingly litigious society and the list goes on. Even the illicit drug dealers find it tough to carry his work and he has almost ran out ideas to bring his merchandize  in and out of the country as the people have ‘wised up’ that they are made mules by the drug cartel. The African syndicates have used their charm to lure local gals to carry their ‘hot items’. When we were growing up, Amma used to tell us that our ancestors in India were duped by the middlemen  into thinking that work in the land of milk and honey called Malaya was darn easy. They would be paid lots of money and fringe benefits for just swatting flies in Malaya to ensure that the raw sugar that is laid to dry is not eaten by pests. In droves, they raced down to Malaya only to find themselves trapped in rubber estates, mosquitoes, pure manual hard work, ruthless mandors (stewards) and the same white colonial masters that they had in India.

Rifle Range Flats, Ayer Itam. Penang.

Archived from: Rifle Range & Padang Tembak, Penang Facebook Group


In the local Hokkien patois, Rifle Range is Pak Cheng Por. The name Rifle Range hails back to the 1950s when the site was used for target practices.
The site is located at the junction of Jalan Padang Tembak with Jalan Boundary (Jalan Sempadan). It is next to the Batu Gantong Chinese Cemetery. Penang Hill is behind.
It is south west of central George Town.
There is also a Federal Reserve Unit adjacent to Rifle Range, a special response team that can be deployed anywhere in Malaysia in an emergency or during public unrest. The main role of this unit is to disperse illegal assembly, riot suppression and to carry out other functions relating to Public Order.
The Rifle Range Flats are one of the Penang state government's earliest low-cost housing projects.
In 1964 the national Ministry of Housing and Local Government identified two pilot projects in order to try out the industrialized building or prefabrication system (known as IBS). The first of these projects was in Kuala Lumpur along Jalan Tun Razak (Jalan Pekeliling).
The second pilot project was set in Pulau Pinang. It consisted of the construction of 6 blocks of 17-storey flats and 3 blocks of 18-storey flats comprising 3,699 units and 66 shop lots along Jalan Rifle Range. The project in Penang was awarded to Hochtief/Chee Seng using the French Estiot System and took 27 months to complete, inclusive of the time taken in setting up the precast factories.
When Rifle Range Flats were completed in the early 1970s they were the tallest buildings in Penang.
None of the units were big - on average they were approximately 36 s.m. for intermediate 1 bedroom units and 38.7 s.m. for 2 bedroom end units. Nonetheless they provided housing for many hardcore poor. Over the years, however, the general condition of Rifle Range Flats has deteriorated rapidly, especially in the common areas.
The advantage of living in Rifle Range is that it is relatively close to town, the property is cheap, and if you are a single person living alone, the space is sufficient. Today, due to rapid development, Rifle Range and the Batu Gantong Cemetery next to it are right at the edge of town.

Can the real Hussein please stand up!

If you drive around KL town, you may start to wonder what is the real spelling of Malaysia's third prime minister. Is it Hussein Onn (as we always knew) or Hussien Onn as depicted by many signboards around town? This, I discovered during my early morning run around the Bukit Tunku area a few weeks ago. It got thinking... Now, is Hussein Onn real name spelt Hussein or Hussien? Not that it really matters. Both sounds the same, and we have other pressing things to think about in life than semantics! Talking about spellings, the place I work is also misspelt on signboards - Connought instead of Connaught. It is one of the legacies left by the British. 

Connaught (anglicised from the Irish term Connacht) is a piece of land in western Ireland with a rich history of sorcerers to talk about from the 6th century AD. Many towns in the British Commonwealth like New Delhi, Hong Kong, Sydney and others have buildings and districts named after Connaught. And our local authorities goofed it up on the signboard.
Is it that the people in charge of checking them did it one eye closed or left the supervision to illiterates? Is this the same lackadaisical (tidak apa) attitude that got the 16 inmates of the illegal orphanage killed? As in any major mishaps in the country, if they cannot blame God, they would start blaming each other.

My point of contention is the orphanage was there like a sitting duck for 10 years without the local authorities realising its existence. Don't the workers or officer travel along the road? Don't they bother to go out of their way to bring its existence to their superiors so that the efficiency of their department can be uplifted?

Just as I was wondering and wandering back, what did I see? A pick-up van with the lettering boldly screaming 'UNLCE ALI CATERING'! I rubbed my eyes to see if my eye-sight was failing. It was Unlce Ali Catering', not Uncle Ali Catering! Maybe it stands for  'Unpalatable Non-appetizing Low-Priority Cleanliness Enterprise'? If Uncle Ali is so slipped short in things like signage on his van, I dread to imagine how he would be in his catering. I do not want to know it the hard way with the runs and drips. Thank you very much.

The ill-fated Hidayah Madrasah Al-Taqwa orphanage in Hulu Langat

RRF no more! to PPSP

Episode 1 (Pilot)
The bell bottoms of the 70s was getting out of fashion in the 80s. The hairs still remained fluffy and thick. People rarely went to barbers, they just trimmed the hair around the ear or just pulled it back! The bells at the bottom of pants got slimmer, maybe not as thin as the drain pipe.
After SPM (the O levels), I spent a lot time at Klang when my uncle moved in to his brand new bungalow in a brand new house estate which is now in a prime area in thick of activities. During this time, I had the privilege of establishing male bonding with a few guys who were there too at time or another - including G, P and LBM.
After finally uprooting ourselves from RRF to plant ourselves in BG, I hardly spent any time (a year and a half) before it was time to be off to varsity. Euphoria was the order of the week in the Sham family at the tail end of May 1983. Letters manifested from NUS and USM offering engineering and medicine respectively. After much deliberation, I decided (with the guidance of the most learned person in the family, Mama) to pursue medical studies in Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang.
After spending 7 years in Penang Free School (PFS), the premier school in the country with a proud tradition to match it, the first impression upon entry to medical school of USM was one of disbelief and grief. Grief, for not opting to Singapore, the shining metropolitan city with its prestigious and glamorous institute of a higher learning to match. Disbelief? Scoring relatively good results in STPM (Malaysian equivalent of A levels), products of schools with a grandeur history of records, my batch mates could not believe that we were sharing a medical school (in our book were the pinnacle of achievement of any school boy) with some of the most unforgettable characters that one can encounter (maybe on Harold Lloyd's slapstick comedy sketch).
Landing in PFS from Hutchings was a culture shock in a positive way, where brilliant child prodigies were roaming about the place with intelligence oozing from their every orifice. In USM medical school  (PPSP), we were  plastered with ghostly apparitions which were quite aliens to us even though we were all living and grew in the same country and studied the same syllabi. Never before in our lives, have we had ever seen such a mammoth congregations of real apparitions in penguin-like suit draped over torsos, faces and heads in unimaginative dull dark unattractive hues and lifeless designs, walking looking at the ground as if they were looking for spare change. (Reminds me of Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick on the Wall' music video where the school children were walking aimlessly and clueless in a robotic manner.)
A tinge of uncertainty or maybe regret was there at the back of the mind if I had indeed made the correct decision of choosing USM instead of the scintillating metropolitan lights of the state city of Singapore and its glamorous and prestigious institute of higher learning to match, NUS.
I could not stomach the fact that some of my brilliant school-mates were denied entry to local varsities and had to uproot themselves off to foreign lands which were receiving them with open arms, Singapore in particular. And here, we were stuck with walking zombies. To be fair, there were some intelligent chaps amongst us but the partition of Bumiputras and nons were as apparent as the Partition of North and South Korea along the 38th parallel!

There were students who were even from places that I never knew existed in Malaysia, like Kota Sarang Semut! (in Kedah, later I found out). Some were alien to the lingua franca of the world- English and knew only a smatter of it, Yes, sir. Yes sir. Three bags full!
There was a group of withdrawn students in my faculty who found solace amongst the same kind who had the delusion that we were traveling in a desert storm. They seem well versed in Arabic language as if we were living at the time of the Islamic Renaissance. Their every sentence spoken in public would be prefixed with full regatta of Islamic greetings (Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim.Assalamulaikum warahmatullahir wabarakatuh ...kesyukuran ke hadrat Allah Subhanahu Wata’ala atas limpah kurniaNya...) and they would put the rest of us, the infidels, in our places by a simple 'have a nice day' (salam sejahtera).
                                                                                                          to be continued...................