Kuala Lumpur
 (You call this Training)

Travel Log: Kuala Lumpur System Engineering Training

Warning this travel log includes graphic language and mature subject matters.   These have been included only when it was important to the story line. No gratuitous mature language or sexual subject matters have been included except where they were gratuitously performed during this trip.   I apologise to everyone I made fun of but I am sure they will agree they were easy targets.

 Novell’s third quarter ends and 66 Systems Engineers head off to Kuala Lumpur.    I have a car pick us up at the office.  We have three people and bags for four, because one of the guys asked us to bring along his bag.  We explained this to the Car Company but they still show up with a small car.  I watch with some amusement as the driver loads, unloads and reloads the luggage in a vain attempt to get, way, too many bags into the boot.   He strikes on the idea that since the back seats fold down that we can fit more bags in with one of the seats down.  I tell him to call for another car.  He explains that we could cosy up together in the back.  I am with Susan, so I am positive, I will get into a great deal of trouble if I cosy up with her in the back seat.   The other passenger is Graham Horne, I am sure he would not like to hear this but he is almost as massive a guy as I am.  So we ain’t going to cosy up in the one seat left in the back.  I tell the guy, again, to get another car, or I could drive his car, which he can pick up later from the airport..  He calls for another car, I think he has heard about my driving.

 The French and UK teams leave around 10 o’clock at night out of London.   Our newest SE, who won’t really start with the company for another 3 days, goes to the counter and is told that he has been upgraded to Business Class.  Of course the Director of Systems Engineering is sitting in the back of the plane so our newest SE volunteers his seat up front to our favourite manager.   Yea Right!    

One of the other guys who flew about a million miles last year is also sitting in the back, for some reason this amuses me but he did not look amused.  The flight attendants must have seen this because it is the first time I have ever seen a demonstration of the “air rage” strap.  This is a device that you slip over a passenger that is going nuts.  They kept pointing him out as they explained what air rage is and that the captain on an aircraft has the power to do just about anything he wants to an unruly passenger up to and  including shoot the offending passenger.   

It is a twelve and half hour flight from London to Kuala Lumpur and the food reminds me of  “C Rations” which taste just a bit worse then the Army slang for them which is “Sea Rat’s”.   I share a row with the Regional Manager for the UK, Chris Neal and my Chief of Staff, Susan, we put her in the middle seat. She doesn’t sleep much because she doesn’t want to lean on either of us, I assume because of her great respect for me and that Chris is just plain scary.   We get the added treat of being sprayed with insecticide about an hour before we land around 5:30 p.m. local time.  I almost lose the team as we walk past a Gucci shop.  I normally only travel with systems engineers so don’t often lose them in Gucci shops.  Luckily we all look so ragged that the store clerk refuses to wait on Susan so we finally meet up at baggage claim where we are entertained by stories of how far the seats recline in business and how much everyone up there enjoyed the food.  

The airport is brand new and about an hour out of in Kuala Lumpur so we have a long bus ride to the Hotel.   We are treated to our first language lesson but after a full day of work four hours at Heathrow, twelve and half hours on a plane, and about two hours in customs and baggage claim no one seems interested.  It is disappointing because I am sure we would have all liked to learned how to say  “Hello, Thank you, and How much do you want for your sister.” another missed opportunity.

We landed on Friday and started training on Sunday so Saturday is a free day.  Everyone makes plans to do a bit of shopping in the morning, the UK team decides to meet at 8:00 am.   I tell anyone that cares that I will be down for breakfast at 9:00am, no one cares.   I get a call from Susan at 9:15 am, no problem with jet lag for me. Saturday morning it is 28c, 100% humidity so we decide to go shopping.  I have to tell you shopping is hard work.  We start at in the top of the line mall where you can buy a real Rolex and pick up a little something from the local Marks & Spencer’s, it is noticeably not very busy.  We meet some of the guys having lunch, but as shopping goes its pretty much a bust.

We walk back out into the oppressive heat and I immediately regret only packing one suitcase for this trip.  I have one shirt for each day and three pairs of trousers (we will not talk about how many pants I packed) We end up in the next mall it is much busier.  When we walk in, there is a shoe store on my right and an electronic store on my left.  I was with Susan, and two of my managers Hans & James, I said,  "was" because now I am completely alone.  

It took me awhile to realise that I was going to spend the rest of the day going from one electronic store to the next, having to keep one eye open for the odd shoe store.  It was interesting to watch Hans and James haggle with the shopkeepers.  I think it is a "Guy thing" when you have $300 to spend for a $600 camera that you just don't tell the storeowner "sorry I just can not afford that much for a camera."  but no I get to watch James haggle.  It was a bit amusing to see the owner offer a Novell System Engineer a free computer bag.  This exchange was repeated, I am sorry to say a ludicrously large number of times throughout the day.   We ran into some of the guys from Asia and were told that this mall was not where the locals buy stuff.  They shop here, but they buy at a kind of run down place around the back of this place.   It takes us quite awhile for us to find this place.  It was a little run down for Kuala Lumpur, which is what we call a dump in Europe.   We walk into the first store and find a wall of software it is all marked 15rm that equates to about 3 quid.   We buy some games but of course you have to haggle so we talk the guy down to 10rm.  I am sure it is all legal software.  Some of the guys bought Windows ME, which will not ship for another month.  I am sure it is Microsoft’s way of seeding the market.

 The temperature has risen to around 35c.  We look for a taxi and see a queue that  which would take us at least 45 minutes to work our way though the line.  A cab driver sees that we really don’t look like we want wait in that queue so offers to give us a ride back to the hotel but he wants to charge us twice the amount it cost to come out here from the hotel.  It cost us 10rm to get to the mall so it will cost me 2 pounds more to not have to spend 45 minutes in a long line waiting for one of the cheap taxis.  You do the math.

 I took a long shower before dinner that feels great, but is kind of scary since the drain is slow and the water is sort of a brown colour.  I decide it was a bad idea to have drunk that large glass of water when I returned from shopping. We head out for a nice relaxing dinner and then surprisingly we end up at a bar.  I know a bunch of SE’s ending up at a bar during SE training, I was shocked as well.    

 The band is called “Gals and Guys” whom we immediately change to “The Gals are Guys.”  Luckily, I am pretty sure no one really found out what sex the band members where.  At least if they found out they where smart enough not to tell anyone.   I know I woke up every morning looking first to the left and then relievingly to the right as I saw that I was alone.  It is amazing how attractive women look at a bar at 4:30 in the morning after consuming large qualities of alcohol.    We got thrown out of the hotel bar at 4:30 at which time Susan decided that it was time to go dancing, I decided it was time to go to bed.  I had a meeting scheduled for 6:00 so I figured an hour’s worth of sleep would do me some good.  

 The next morning almost all of the SE’s showed up on time and ready for training.   I start to call the ones that I thought might oversleep.  One of the Asian guys asked me how I knew whom to call and I told him it was pretty easy since I was with most of them the night before.    I couldn’t get our newest SE on the phone so sent Susan to go drag him down to training.   She knocked on his door but still wasn’t able to get an answer and since she had poured him into his room just an hour before she knew he must still be in there.

  She got security to open the door but the SE had set the security chain so, all they could do was yell into the room and continue to call him on the phone.   I was kept informed of the progress and was thinking of the phone call I would have to make to my boss, Juan Carlos.   “Juan Carlos, This is Tom.   I thought I would just give you a quick update on how training is going.”    “Good, Good, How is it going?”   “Well it is just the first day so it hasn’t really started yet but the format looks good.   By the way can you do me a favour?”  “Sure Tom, What?”   “ Could you have your wife, give my wife a call, and tell her to go ahead back to the States.”  “Tom, I could do that, but why are you sending Cheryl home?”   “Well, that is why I really called.   You, see I killed a SE.”  “Puta,  I knew you were a hard ass but why the hell would you kill an SE?”  “Well Sir, I didn’t really kill him, but I did buy at the bar and he died of alcohol poisoning sometime after Susan dropped him into his room.  I just thought it would be better for Cheryl to head home and after the investigation I would go ahead pack everything up and head back myself to Corporate and see if I could get a job in Marketing or something.”

 Luckily, we got security to disassemble the door and instead of finding a dead SE we found a very hung-over and very confused SE surrounded by a bunch of hotel maintenance guys, security, and Susan, all looking down at him.  I think the first thing he heard was, “Get up, you freaking pussy it is time to go to training.” Of course I am not sure she said that, but I can’t think of anything else she would say to an SE that drank too hard to show up for training. 

 This was just day one of training and it would not be the first time that I would have to drag a SE out of bed after a hard night of drinking. He was of course the only guy we had to actually take the door off its hinges to get down to the sessions.    Just to be accurate this nameless SE didn’t really start with Novell until the next day so I guess I would only have been guilty of killing some poor guy who was going to start with us in a couple of days.

 I was later seriously counselled by the Regional Manager for Region Central for holding down the German SE team and pouring alcohol down their collective throats.   I am not sure I should take all the blame for this, there was a lot of stupidity going on between the teams.  The UK and German teams trying to see who could stay up the latest and drink the longest.  Most of them showed up bright and early every morning to our training, but I am sorry to say some of the SE trainees did not show up on time.   I am sure they where SE trainees because I am sure no real SE would not show up late for training no matter how late they stayed up or how hard they drank.

 I like to think that I performed a valuable service due to the international nature of this conference throughout the first two days, I was asked to translate uniquely American phrases and terms.   Most are straightforward, pants for trousers, as in “Who wears the pants in your family” it just does not translate well.   The ones that seemed to get the strongest reaction was the causal use of the words “freaking” and “sucks.”   But my personal favourites have to be,  “Screw the pouch” and “Cluster fuck” I had to translate screw the poach not because the UK guys couldn’t translate it, but because after they translated it they still could not believe that was what the instructor said during the training.   I didn’t really translate “cluster fuck” it pretty much means what you would think it means, but after our team building exercise everyone understood what I mean when I often use it during our management meetings.    I have often received confused looks when I have used that phrase before, but it became clear to everyone what I really mean what I use it to describe the team building exercise in Kuala Lumpur.   I had guys come back and say, “Tom, now I get what you mean when you say, “What a cluster fuck.” 

 So as to not make this too unbearably long (not much hope of that, is there?) I will tell you the rest of the week went pretty much along the same lines, a lot of training, a lot of drinking and not much sleep.  I got about 4 hours sleep the last six days of SE training.  

 The last interesting thing that happened was that as I checked in for the flight home. I used my hard earned British Airways Silver status to check in at the first class counter.   I normally would not do this, since as an old Army scout, I like to be the first guy on the ground, the last guy in the chow line, the last guy to clear his weapon and the last guy to leave.  In my defence I am now older, wiser, and I was just plain tired.   When I checked in, they upgraded my chief of staff and me to business class.   I did not even think about refusing the upgrade.  My chief of staff of course tried to get us moved back to our original seats.   I heard Kevin, one of my direct reports whom I will always be grateful, say “Just walk away.  They have upgraded you to Business, just calmly walk away.”  Which I did, I picked up my Business class boarding card and left my Chief of Staff arguing with the lady at the counter about how we had assigned seats.   She lost the fight and was forced to fly business.  When she asked me how it would looked to have us flying up front with most of the team in the back I answered like the “Grunt” I will always be. “Fuckem I’m tired, they’ll get over it.”  I fell asleep the minute the wheels retracted into their bays and awoke 13 hours later as the wheels dropped back down and locked into place for landing.   I got more sleep on the flight back then I got the entire time I was in Kuala Lumpur.  Ain’t it great to be the Directory of Systems Engineering.   The only guys I know that can drink harder, train longer, and still wake up alone more than the all the “Grunts” I served with in the Infantry.

 Prologue

A couple of days after my return, I have to say I was very disappointed to see the banner welcoming us to the Hotel and SE training in Kuala Lumpur had shown up at the UK office.   I am not sure what person or persons is responsible for its theft but I am glad that the £20 pounds and business card that I made available to some of the guys was returned unused to me.