A Terrible Pang of Nostalgia

For those who don't already know, I worked in a steel mill once. I know the word 'mill' tends to evoke images of grainary mills, or lesung batus, but no, this is a plant where scrap steel and iron ore were melted down at one end and steel bars came out at the other end.

It was hot, dirty, grimy, sweaty, long, hard hours of totally hands-on work. Work began the moment you stepped into the plant, and ended only when the job was completed. Sometimes that meant going home in a near zombie-like state at 10pm. I climbed up 60 foot catwalks, crawled into furnace crevices, wedged myself against walls to get closer to hydraulic cylinders, and frequently spent hours dissembling and overhauling air motors and pumps.

If I had a manicurist, she would have dropped dead of horror at the sight of my nails. Make-up was a luxury reserved for Fridays, the only day I had off, since technical staff work six full days a week. The six days I worked, I forewent Bobby Brown's Sheer Matte Pressed Powder in Sand for a heavy dusting of furnace/steel dust, which was oh-so strikingly set off by a generous rougeing of diesel oil and grease.

The potential dilemma of choosing something to wear each morning was totally non-existent. Six days a week, I wore baggy overalls and clunky steel-toe-capped safety boots. Second hand. Accesories were a safety helmet, face mask and workmen (or in this cawe, workwomen) gloves. Hair was another non-issue. Styling it was totally out of the question due to stay-factor. It always knotted into a servicable braid. My face and hands were perpetually streaked or covered in grease and/or black oil, as were my clothes. You can forget about trying to wash the grease out of your overalls, because baby, they're there to stay. At least until your overalls disintegrated.

However, seeing as how I was ONE female out of almost 500 men working in the plant (that place has an approximately 8:1 male:female ratio!), I refused to allow my feminity to be totally overwhelmed. The uniform and the safety gear was absolutely necessary, but I would almost defiantly put on the lipstick (budge-proof!) every morning, and painted my white safety hat with pretty flowers and butterflies. Erm .. the flowers and the butterflies were also a sort of insurance against helmet theft. I had lost three helmets prior to my last one. After the artwork, it never got nicked again ... ;o)

The work was tough. Dirty, grimy, sweaty and the long hours were sometimes overwhelming, not to mention demanding. Everyone expected you to give 110% all the time. If you had a job to do, you finished it. If you haven't, then you stay till you do.

By the way, did I mention I only worked for 10 weeks to fulfil my university's Industrial Training requirement? That's right. All that was expected from a trainee!

But I loved every moment of it. Every single sweaty moment, every single minute I worked. I loved it even when, as the lowly trainee, I was given the filthy task of emptying the tank of hydraulic oil and was drenched head-to-toe - with hydraulic oil! It took me two hours and 2 bottles of shampoo to get myself satisfactorily clean. I loved being in the furnace control room, 20 metres from the flaming, 1500oC furnace.

Perwaja Steel has received - and still is receiving! - a lot of bad rep. Management-wise, I say they deserve it. From a technical point of view, however, I don't believe I could find a better place than that to work in. Never before have I come across - or even heard of - a place with better work ethics than Perwaja. Almost everyone is just so responsible for themselves, that the place almost runs itself! If you had a job to do, then by Jove, you did it. Tea break ends at 3.30pm, and whoops! It's 3.25! Time to get back to work! I was fortunate enough to have the freedom of moving around the different departments as I pleased, which resulted in my getting to know my way around the Mechanical Services department pretty well, and at almost every sector I noticed that not only the managers, but even the lowest technicians themselves were self-responsible. I found the level of work-integrity astounding.

Truly, there is no way one can go to this plant, see the way it works and still come away with the perception that this efficient, productive plant is an ailing company unable to cover it's own expenses, not to mention not generate a profit. As with the last owners, it's a management issue. *Sigh* People will never learn.

But beyond everything else, I loved the people there the most. Yes, for their integrity, but also for their open-naturedness, the way they take you in and care for you as one of their own, the open camaraderie, most especially for the way that everyone there seems to be family. I can't drive in the streets 100 metres before I get honked at - not in ire, but in greeting.

I went there dreading the fact that I would have to survive 10 weeks not only in the farther reaches of civiliation (read: KL), but also that I would have to put up with kampung people. How wrong I was!

Chukai in Kemaman is a little town, only a 15-minute drive across including traffic light stops! Anonymity is only an option for those passing-through. Everyone knows everyone else. Even if they don't know you personally, they've definitely seen you at least 5 times before. It doesn't even get to 6 degrees-of-separation. If you know even just 2 locals, hey! You're most likely already connected to everyone else in town! Never more truly have I come across a more perfect place to put to the phrase, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." Heck, they probably know even your grandmother's name!

Small-town folks are greatly under-rated, at least in Kemaman they are, anyway. Another thing which so endeared them to me was their sincerity. City folk are of a much harder, flinty nature. I loved the laid-backness of the people of Kemaman, their lack of subterfuge and snideness we city-folk possess. They are not so petty, and so very much more trusting. Imagine leaving your car idling out front while you go in to buy a pack of cigarettes and hey! Your friend is here, a little chat would be in good order. It had my city-bred-wariness clanging in high alarm the first time I came across it! Aiyo! Until I left, I never completely got over the nervousness.

It was only 10 weeks, yet this experience has been indelibly etched in my soul. A healthy place to work, a wonderful place to live. Perwaja is a bloody playground for engineers; every working engineer's wet dream! And Kemaman is a wholesome place to live. Also, it's not so the back-and-beyond as one might think. It's only a 30-minute scenic drive to Kuantan. Heck, it sometimes takes me longer than that to get to KLCC! Oh! And a fabulous plus point is that it's only a 10-minute drive to beautiful, beautiful Cherating! *glee!*

I learned so many lessons in those 10 short weeks: lessons in business, management, and in engineering. Lessons on how to live, and hard lessons of love. I made so many honest friends there, people who have remained real and true despite the separation of distance and time. Kemaman has forever staked it's claim in my heart. It was, without question, the best 10 weeks of my life.