Let The River Run

2nd of January 2006 marked the 10th anniversary of my working life. I came back from UK in November '95 and started work in MCIS (now known as MCIS Zurich) on 2nd January 1996.

One thing about working life is that so many things happen and time passes so fast that you seldom really look back or even remember what happened to you. But over the last few days I thought about where I was 10 years ago today:-

1. I was dead broke in 1996. I didn't feel like asking from my parents anymore, and had almost no money when I started work. Thanks to my good friend Stephen's generosity, I was able to bunk at his place in Cheras for a while. Yeah, I didn't save any money at all when I was younger, drank it all in Belfast (oops!).

2. I'm still quite broke in 2006. This is not really true, me and my deer have some savings stashed up. But still, some months we just scrape by. And this despite a combined income that is 5 times my 1996 salary. So many bills to pay, so many obligations to meet, sigh.


3. Public transport works in 1996. Back then I could take mini bus 32 from Cheras at 7 am, be in Kota Raya by 7.30, hop on another bus in Klang Bus Stand at 7.40, and be at my office in PJ by 8.10 am. Nowadays I leave home at 6.45 am, and it takes me 90 minutes to travel the same distance to my current office by car.

4. I was naive and idealistic in '96. I quarreled with my then boss over his pessimism and negative reaction to new ideas, on my first day of work. But over time, I learned to understand his problems and benefited fom his guidance. I remember him as kind and fair, with a good sense of humour to boot.

5. Those days there were Celcom, Adam, Mobikom, Mutiara Telekom, Maxis and Emartel. Nowadays its just Celcom, Maxis and Digi.

6. There was this wonderful bank called Phileo Allied that broke all the rules and gave amazing service to its customers. But the powers-that-be chose to destroy it in 2000 by forcing it to merge with Maybank. The former CEO of the bank was recently named one of the top 10 CEO's in Canada. Go figure.

7. The company sent me to a motivation seminar in April '96 along with 70 other people, and I came back a changed man. But cynicism soon set in as I realized things only changed for a while, everyone reverted to who they were after a few months. I was to be sent to another five motivation seminars over the next four years, including one in Ulu Langat where we had to find our way out of the jungle at 2 am in the morning. And still nothing changed.

8. My office PC then was a Pentium 133 with 32Mb RAM, 200 Mb hard disk. My current office notebook is Pentium IV 1.5 GHz, 512 Mb RAM, 60 GB hard disk.

9. The whole office shared a dial-up internet connection. I kid you not.