it is a fact of life that everywhere one temporarily spend some time, friendships and acquaintances are struck sometimes for life, sometimes very briefly. so it is in petronas that i somehow entered the orbit of one ikhlas abdul rahman. though not very close we struck up a friendship that last for the better part of almost 15years and the last i heard of him was from my brother-in-law in esso who now closely liase with ikhlas as ikhlas has also apparently comeup in the world, being now in some sort of position overseeing petronas jv with esso. also, everywhere one sojourn takes one to, invariably there one would encounter a kindly soul with a somewhat unusual name such as jai bin konik in rmc, so it was for me that i encountered one KADIR LAMBAK in petronas, not entirely privy as to why his father has that unusual name, never dared to ask him why. more on jai in a few months!!!
my stay in petronas was unusually short, a mere 1 month for the following reasons:
a). as a trainee engineer in those early days of petronas, one has to take one's own initiative on what one's duties and responsibilities were, i subsequently learned that the primary duties was zip, nothing just pretend to be busy and absorb as much knowledge as possible. inevitably this led to my daily efforts to be absent from the office and the main trick here is not to let puan minah track you, which was a difficult task as she is one of those kaypochee type if you get my meaning.
one of the basic requirement was to have had been on a stay on an oil platform for six occasions for what the manual classify as familiarisation trips. my first trip was to "tapisc", an oil platform kettle-shaped like all esso's platform. so i took a twin biplane from kl to kerteh, then a nuri chopper to the platform, spent a few days which was so bloody boring that i never again went onboard an oil platform, the general public might think that it's glamorous out there. wrong!!!!. just imagine you are in a kettle with nothing much to do, as the experts there have got no interest to teach you as it could mean them being soon jobless, surrounded by water, no women nothing at all , just endless expense of water to look at and tubs and tubs of ice cream to plunder on. i think i only lasted 3days.
b). on my return to the office there was of course the necessary ritual of writing a report for which reason i had to face puan minah to request for stationeries. believe it or not, just like ripleys yeah, it took her a week.
c)another of our duty was to accompany our sister materials and controls department staff when one of them had to attend what was glamorously referred to as "bid opening" its nothing more than just signing off against your name in an attendance sheet confirming that you have attended the occasion and that everything was above board,i.e. no one was bribed with wine and women to our knowledge. when the full report reached my manager, he remarked "well done". just for attending!! my hamid was an original follower of pak lah tidur as long ago as in 1980.
d) the ultimate and real reason was that mmc offered me a job as an engineer, not trainee and a substantial salary jump of rm 2300/-as compared to rm1,800/- in petronas, all this after just one month of working heh,heh, heh, am i good or were they desperate?? years later i found out that it was the latter (which immediately deflated my ego) in order to fulfill the bumi quota.
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