Time to move on...

Dear Friends, Bloggers, The world,

Its getting harder and harder to update now. I know its lame to say, I'm busy, a lot of stuff lah to do and what not..but, thats it I guess. Some can just feel content in knowing that they have updated their blog with something. Nope. Not me. An update should be monumental. Thats just me I guess.

Ok, updates..I'm going through this dilemma. Ok, at this point people who know me will say, why talk about work Amad..again! Well hang on, hold your horses, whats wrong with being passionate with what you do? Ok, so I was offerred to take control of engineering. I was from engineering for 6 years ago, then was sent to production and now they want me to replace the current manager. Problem is..he is a friend.

Me and Francis. Good title for a movie ya. Francis and me go way back. He was my mentor and my boss when I started. Here's the thing, there is still sentiment in the plant that Malays know less and technically unsound on the technology/engineering stuff compared to the Chinese. Sad to say, its kinda true. But I decided to prove the masses wrong. I took every single abused lashed at me as an encouragement to do better. Those who know me then knew that my life was all work. This resilience started to take notice and Francis started to open to me by saying," ..one of these days I'll probably drop dead due to something.., its about time I teach someone what I know." Thats exactly what he did.

Francis was the first son of a char kuey teou peddler. He was taken in as an apprentice in 1977 and ascended to his current post as Plant Engineering Manager. He was involved in 90% of the commissioning of machines and technology training in this plant. He has also single handedly save the company 2.3 million with his developement of our own mixer controls and assisted Sumitomo industries in Japan for the developement of the now much acclaim RJS 7 PCR making machine, a best selling making machine from this manufacturer. You bet ya when he wanted to hand down his knowledge it was an honour. And I incurred the silent wrath and jealousy amongst colleagues as he never, I repeat never revealed his knowledge to anyone till I came.

The trainning was tough. Just like the kung fu movies, you need to crawl to get the knowledge. Biasalah chinamen style. After all the abuse, and even making me cry twice..I never gave up and sought to acquire as much knowledge as I could from Francis. Times past, I was known by my colleagues as Yang Mar - Dragonblood Malay. A name that harboured 2 meanings; one that i was not a typical malay and two that I was also like a vampire who sucked knowledge from the sifus. I was fine with it becouse the efforts were starting to show.

To put it simple, I wouldn't be where I am now if it wasn't for Francis. And the best thing was, we became really good friends. We hang out a lot after work. Talking about life, the hard times, Malay-chinese relationship, family values and all. I started to build a friendship that I thought could never be built. Then we seperated. Francis was assigned to take up half a project and I was promoted to take up the other half. So, from subordinate, now colleagues. The friendship never ended.

In particular, there was a time I was having a problem during commissioning. It lasted for nearly 40 hrs straight. It was then the chinese new year holiday. By chance he heard the problem from my technician who spoke to him by phone asking for advice. Francis called said if I needed help. I said no I'll handle things. That time we spoke was at 2.30am. However. Francis, without any professional obligation to be there, came at 3am. We went through the problem togather and had the machine up by 10am the next morning. I asked him why he came to help and he replied," I knew you must be in trouble and I came to help". It was his holiday. He had a family who needed him to drive them down to Penang the next morning. He just said, " Nah get my wife to drive maaaahh. At least now you can sleep kan?"

So, later I became a business unit manager and he took helm as Plant Engineering Manager. Thats when the problem came. Technical people are good at what they do but somehow, in the eyes of top management his management skills were perceived as insufficient. I do not know what people saw in my form of management but by the grace of Ar-Rahman I was blessed with results. So management put two-and-two togather and figured to try an engineering-based production business unit manager will be a good angle to try and shape the engineering since he has married the 2 core manufacturing functional teams into one.

But that wasn't the final reason. Unbeknowest to me, in Francis's personal file he cited my name as his immediate successor. And in his last employee dialog he mentioned again when ask of his succession, he said," I do not know of your plans for Amad..but I hope that you consider him as my replacement should something ever happens to me". Tis he answered the HR Director.

And the person to break the news to me was Francis himself. It was hard to take it in as I feared that maybe he was being lett-off. I rushed to meet the HR Director to get a final confirmation and he told me that I need to decide how to use Francis, and that if he stays.. he reports to me.

Francis..my friend. You have always been there for me and always had my back. And now I look blank on my org chart trying to make his function work..still staring.....but I think I found an angle.

So, as said, thus that is my monumental event so far. I will, I think, will not have time to update about my blog anymore. I'll still keep it on, just to flip through to read my ol post for nostalgia. Maybe update if the time permits and something does come up worth blogging about..maybe just to announce if i'm getting married hahaha. But the new job is tough.

I wanted to write about something else actually but thought why should we write about stuff emotionally and regret the consequences. What is said can never be taken back. And scars will heal but deep ones leave a mark. I guess the reason I thought, of all my other monumental updates, like falling in love-being dumped again, new found freindships with uni friends and the status of my social activities like salsa, the one most important was the realisation of a friendship lifecycle.

And like Francis..we do meet other people. Other important people that come into our lives. To stay on and keep a single friendship alive is a behemoth task, and many painfull roads down the way. And sometimes the ones that were once close to you..moved on. You know this when they cant have a decent conversation with you but keep asking about, 'ade girlfren ke tak?' After that..awkward silence..Sometimes the other half that pines for the friendship should realise the futile hope when the another moves on. And like Francis, and like Feizal and like Rambo and like..all the other important ones, old or new in our lives, a friend is one that above all puts others needs before their own. And the world still holds a portion of these people in population. I guess at this point we just say goodbye to the the old and cherish the ones that are relevent to us.

In conclusion, thank you my fellow bloggers for your supports, and honest comments. Thank you for even just reading the first 3 lines couse I know i can be overdramatic when writing. Thank you for being patient for the ones that actually took time to read through till the end, only realising that I lost the plot half-way at paragraph 3. And thank you for those whom have included me in their blogs to follow, I appologise if I had directly or indirectly hurt anyone along this course of blogging from my views or opinions or comments. To all, I wish you all the best. Goodbye...... Thank you.

Thank you...