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My Boyanese colleague

 


My father passed away when I was in Telekom Alor Setar. My boss was a kind man and knowing my family circumstances agreed to release me without a replacement. 


I was transferred to Ipoh Telekom at the end of the year. It was indeed a big help to my family as I was the only one who was gainfully employed in formal employment. My two brothers were in part time employment - the eldest as a bar attendant and the younger as a cycle park attendant. My move was a big relief to my family who had just lost my father, the sole breadwinner of the family. 


I was attached to the Telekom Department which was neighbouring the Ipoh Central Market. It was a carefree life as the Department was flush with funds - getting additional resources was no big deal and annually our staff numbers swelled. A group of us in 

the Department  used to go down for drinks all at the same time. We used to  jump into any town bus that came along and get down at the last stop, look around for a coffee shop and have our dinks there, and return to the office after our meal. 


Our chief clerk was from the Stores in Kuala Lumpur, and knew more about store-keeping than running an office. To say he was intimidated by the hostile group of juniors is an understatement as we were up to date with our day to day work and our chief clerk was in no way able to prevent us from going out in large numbers.


There was a small space abutting the office library which was lined up with cupboards to form a small attic. We used the space as a pantry and had our meals there sometimes. We had a Boyanese (also known as Baweanese. These are people who are a horse breeding clan from Indonesia) clerk working with us. In Ipoh, a lot of the race course staff came from the Boyanese community. Once in a way when a horse was shot dead because he had injuries to the leg that rendered him unfit for races, the Boyanese community would have a feast with the horse meat as the main dish. This colleague of ours would then bring some of the cooked meat to share with his colleagues in the Department the following morning. 


We had two vegetarians amongst us, one a male and another a female in our office. The male colleague tolerated our habits but the female was a new comer and as such we did not treat her as an equal and felt we did not need to seek her indulgence. So our festivities continued unhindered.   




All contents (c) Ganapathy Ramasamy, mynameisgana@blogspot.com


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