cookie-cutter comments

Got balls anot?

I found a pair transplanted onto me. Yes, it sounds strange now, walking around with 2 pairs of the family jewels (destiny? the call to spread the seed?). Ridiculous, really, but I found the testicular fortitude to stand up to several people this morning. Ironic, too, since I was late for this morning’s meeting.
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You wouldn’t suspect it from looking at her. She’s pretty old, in her early fifties at least and inflicted with a constant need to shift eyes, lips and hands. She comes across as harried, constantly on the brink of a major breakdown and pretty lost; I don’t blame her, having seen and spoken to some of her clients/tenants. Maybe it’s a typically asian trait, but the tenants I’ve seen think nothing of harassing the management, as if paying rent has made the right to be an ass inherent and divine. You could see, however, that she had been beautiful in her youth (I wonder why I made that observation).

“So, if I hire contractor A to do maintenance, and in the course of doing work for somebody else in my building, contractor A fouls up, aren’t I vicariously responsible since, if the cause of the damage was due to a blockage, and I hire contractor A to do my maintenance, shouldn’t contractor A be held liable for incompetence?” she fires the whole salvo at me.

I blinked, my jaws tried to work and I saw her in a completely new light.
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I got a substantially thinner course book today, now that I’ve switched. Pink (god almighty, why is everything bad pink), glossy cover and a title that promises to show me the way through the labyrinth of contract law.

Oh, yay. I can hear the trumpets sounding.

Which brings me to another issue quite nicely. Finding the time to plow through those horrid pages will take some doing, unfortunately, and as discipline’s not my middle name, I aspect to be prodding and cajoling myself for the next 2.5 months.

There’s got to be easier ways to make money, I’m thinking.

My radio was off on the way back from Selesa Jaya. I was trying to think. I zoomed past traffic, half-way giving up maintaining a dismal 80km/h while wondering what he had told me.

What would lawyers say about proximate cause? As far as I understand it, proximate cause refers to the most immediate cause of a particular phenomenon, without which said phenomenon would not arise. That is to say, there is a direct causal and necessary relationship of events that have led up to a particular phenomenon.

Say, for example, a fire breaks out after a flashover. Now, in standard parlance, we say that the proximate cause of the fire damage or, fire, was the flashover. But there are antecedents to the flashover, of course. If we track back, for um.. other purposes, we could examine how the flashover occurred.

So, for example, a build-up of ambient moisture between copper busbars/phases under high current could have sufficiently created conditions for a spark to leap over phase-to-phase if, for example, the ambient moisture had sufficiently caused the sheathing of the busbar to deteriorate.

Or, the flashover could have occurred because the sheathes failed either because the sheathes became brittle over the years and fell away from at least one busbar (and an insufficiently earthed neutral would have caused a phase-to-ground flashover). Or, moisture between the sheath and the busbars within caused the sheathe to fail over time. The possibilities are varied.

When determining liability, I suppose, the question would be how far back would you have to go definitively?

When you’re talking about all risks, for example, wear and tear is a definite exclusion because, the theory goes, wear and tear is a natural consequence of operation, and therefore cannot be said to be unforseen so that any loss arising cannot be, strictly speaking, be said to be fortuitous. If there is no uncertainty, then logically, no transfer of risk is effected (in reference to certain do-able kinds of risk).

To say event A is caused by wear and tear, however, is insufficient in and of itself. The question that immediately arises is: is this wear and tear a “natural consequence of operation”? If it can be established that it is, then there is no dispute. That is to say, it must be established that the “natural consequence of operation” was the sufficient and only cause of the failure/damage (this is almost impossibly hard to do without a process of elimination).

If, however, one asks if the cause is an extraordinary case of wear and tear, one is actually asking if the wear and tear was due only to the “natural consequence of operation”.

So back to his case. Here, a bearing failed, causing the arm to lean against the sides of its sheath thus causing, during operation, damage.

The failure was discovered to be wear on said bearing. The question that’s arisen is: is this an extraordinary case of wear and tear?

Simply, this means moving back the causal chain and discovering how the wear and tear could have arisen.

This then is a whole slew of different questions, and a whole new set of problems. The bearing could have failed prematurely, which either means the manufacturer of the bearing is to blame, or the manufacturer of the machine is to blame, if the bearings were never changed.

Or the client’s staff could be at fault if they did not carry out maintenance promptly or well. Worse, if they were circumspect with maintenance and using the right bearings etc, then the question reverts to blame on the manufacturers.. which in this case would still mean that liability is in question.

All this hangs on obtaining a metallurgical report urgently, and I told him so over the phone when I reached home. Hmmm… something to watch out for, this case.

Two times in a row is too much.

This morning, one blithering idiot implied that me and the rest of us in my company were on the take. I got mad. I got really mad.

“Why do you always use XYZ? There are others in your area, what? Where is he based?” she fires off.

“He’s based in KL, but he has contacts nationwide,” I replied, wondering where this was going.

“Then why use him?”

“Because he’s reliable. He’s always been reliable. The others will quote but not follow through, and only he does, from experience.”

“But you all always use him, you know,” she said, interrupting me.

“It’s not as if we always use him, it’s just that no one else wants it and he takes up the slack”.

“You know the bosses and managers in KL are asking why you all always call XYZ company–”

“Wait a minute, what’s the suggestion here, what’s the implication?”

“That you keep calling XYZ all the time. How come–”

“Wait, wait– you’re suggesting that we call him all the time because we have a deal with him? You think we pakat with him?”

“That’s what–”

“No, no, your implication is that I always call him, we always call him, because we get money from him, is that what you’re saying!”

“That’s what everybody is suspicious about–” she said.

“I don’t like the implication, and I don’t appreciate–”

“Then why always call him?”

“You are saying I take MONEY from him? I have NEVER–”

“I’m not saying you lah, but I just telling you that people are talking lah, not about you lah, about the company lah.”

By this time I was quivering with boiling rage. My vision didn’t turn red, I didn’t leap into a berserk fury, I didn’t smash chairs, not that kind of reckless rage. My mind was turning to last Saturday’s “offer” and I thought to myself, what the fuck?! I mean, really, what the fuck?!

“Ok, nevermind, just pass me the other quotations,” she said, after I refused to answer her. “Ok,” I replied, as noncommittal as I could manage, before slamming the phone on the receiver.

Gratuitous Update: she called back much later, and was conciliatory, we almost kissed and made up on the phone (yelch!).

Ahh.. the Cosmic Balance is restored once more..

My father shouts “Kill! Kill lah!” with as much passion as he can muster, and I know he must be watching badminton or some such. Not a strange sentiment given how passionate he is about games. I remember a course in Anthropology I did back in the day during which we examined how games were like life, wars and such: conflict being the basis of our analysis. If a game is anything like war, my father presumably applies the same brutal passion to life, or so the pseudo-theory goes, which in this case can only be true.

Besides a robust disdain for politics in general, a disdain which ironically translates to maintaining an obsessive interest in the same, my father has a range of opinions about almost everything. Opinions, that is, that boil down to a simple fact: life is hard, ugly and people are the shites (sic); in his most florid declamations, he truly sounds as if he believes that “Hell is other people”.

Which I have been discovering. Not to sound uncommonly jaded for one so young (a questionable opinion of my own age, yes) but I’ve just about run the gammut of people who, in trying to make ends meet, are not afraid to cheat, lie, beg, steal, bitch, whine — not necessarily in that order — for what they want.

However, being in the “real world” populated by the people who believe that “life is hard, ugly and people are the shites” has left me, many times, to question the motivations behind people who are so willing to sell their integrity so cheaply.

This recent Thursday night out was a sort of example for me, a test case (?), an eye-opener. Not two feet away from where we (my friends and I) sat were a bunch of people in plainsclothes, who my friend identified as being “law-enforcers”. I won’t say the Police or Traffic police, but those details are sometimes unnecessary.

This same friend spent the first half of the night sneering at them, and the other half dancing on the seats and tables with them, the alcohol once again proving that social cohesion works best when you don’t know what you’re doing (or have no control over your basic motor skills; pick either).

What he said earlier in the night, however, made sense: these “law enforcement officers” were tossing back whiskeys and coke like there was no tomorrow, with no care in the world, while we plebes pick fights in the mud over scraps.

They probably didn’t bother who speculated about the money they were flinging about, which is probably worse. In training schools, apparently, these would-be officers are forced to accept bribes to make them jointly culpable with their senior officers… this, of course, is a rumour.

After a while, you get used to it: this is Malaysia, after all, the land of the helpless and the Internal Security Act.

But what happens if you know a decent fellow who begins walking the crooked path and worse, things you do, too?

This happened this evening as I finished dinner with him. He put his arm around my shoulders and promised me a ’share’ of the takings, after he cashes out his check, since I was instrumental in getting him the assignment for last night’s catastrophe. I protested, shocked and hurt, and he said he understood, that everybody wants to make money, got bills to pay, everyone needs a little something.

I said not me. I cannot and will not be bought. Not patting my own back, here: my colleagues and I have to do this on a regular basis, and we’re the good guys in a relatively ugly industry (I’m immensely proud to say), believe it or not. We can be shitty assholes, too. And, more importantly, we’re all realists and we know this sorta shit happens all the time.

What hurts is hearing this from someone you respect, someone who you might look up to. Firstly, you lose that respect you had, you lose it and you start getting resentful, angry, hurt..

And secondly, you begin to wonder if the other party respects you so little that he has no qualms about offering to buy off your dignity.

I hear my dad again, screaming “Kill lah! Kill!” and whooping with each stroke of the racket, and wonder again how life became “hard and ugly”, and populated by turds.

It wasn’t a big bank by any means; not a multi-storeyed affair with lots of bells and whistles, marbled walkways or lush furnishing, but it was impressive enough. More impressive still was the amount of water I found myself wading in, just minutes upon my arrival.

I didn’t know bank tellers were this cute, though. I found myself making excuses to stick around for just a bit longer, but water-logged shoes don’t make good footwear. That and the fact that I had to dream up something pretty quickly to get things in order.

Which meant climbing rickety ladders and peeping through small portholes to take badly aimed pictures. Once that was done, I found myself gesticulating at pipes and such, trying to make sense to the client all the while wondering what in the world I was saying, which, in this line of work, happens quite often.

From that particular bit of madness I stumbled home to find the family unit preparing to go out: it was mum’s birthday, and while I remembered it, I didn’t expect an elaborate celebration. Between enduring expensive wine and my brother’s incessant demand that I find other means of paying the bills, I recall staring blankly at billboards in the distance wondering when everyone would shut the hell up: thinking with food and family around is just not done, I realize now.

Half-awake, I play ball and make my way back to site. I feel a twinge of guilt when I learn that one of the contractors had not taken their dinners; a twinge and quickly gone, when I remembered just what sort of asshole this fella really was.

I slap my sizable belly and offer my commiseration, smiling.

And that was the highlight of the night, honestly.

The rest fades in a blurry haze: back home; bath; forgetable small talk and then, thankfully, sleep.

Bad days should be this good, considering how my client might be facing a multi-million dollar suit.

It was a chance meeting on the road. Richard was heading off for lunch and I happened to be driving right behind his car. A few shouted comments past each other’s wound-down windows and I found myself enjoying some really good wan ton mee near Century Gardens.

Much of what we discussed will not find its way here, but the upshot of it revolves around the fact that he’s doing really well, and that I should, to paraphrase, consider moving elsewhere. And I have, for the nth time considered this.

But considering options at this stage would be premature. I know my worth; I was confirmed in it about 2 months back when I had an alternative offer. But plans are plans, and they must be followed through, if only to gain that bit of information I require to make my decision. I will have to see if AK delivers on his promise/word. If he doesn’t, then we must part ways, no matter the relationship we have.

Talking with Richard is always a game. He tells me what he wants me to know, perhaps wishing me to distribute the information, and sometimes he tells me things to convince me of his own position; i.e. he usually has a hidden agenda. This lunch session was no different, but after chatting with him for about 2 hours concerning work and everything in between, I realised why Koh maintains a fascination with him; he makes you feel as if you’re not an employee, not a ma chai or underling, but an equal.

That and the fact that we used to be closed to Richard, made me miss talking to him. I came away with a sense of what was out there in the market, and the sort of opportunities I was letting slip past me. It was a good experience overall.

Speaking of turning corners, the government seems to have decided that importers of foreign cars which compete directly with Proton are to be levied heavy charges for, apparently, under-declaring their values at Customs and selling them at competitive prices to customers in Malaysia. A snippet of this piece of news can be found here at the New Straits Times website.

The affected brands would be Kia, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Chery, Fiat and Mahindra Scorpio. Korean cars, in particular, have been enjoying burgeoning sales in the past few months due to competitive pricing; in the light of alternatives to Proton, many have taken refuge in purchases of these cars, and who can blame them? Their levels of quality, especially so for Hyundai cars, are very high.

The furore over this imposed charge, of 30% against sales price for vehicle capacities 1.6 litres and below, and 38% for vehicles above 1.6 litres is considerable, but the government has waved them off, noting that similar charges were imposed last year.

In response, the Association of Malay Importers and Traders of Motor Vehicles president Datuk Abdul Hamid Ibrahim has come right out and declared that said brands would not survive due to the immense competition in Malaysia, which is probably double-speak for saying “Only Proton will prosper”. This news snippet can be found here.

See, my question is: why isn’t anyone looking into the culpability of the Immigrations Officers who approve the imports of these vehicles? Open market prices for the vehicles of the affected brands are available; if they are available, Customs should have taken the trouble to investigate the prices being declared and if they did, they would have brought up charges against these said importers, wouldn’t they? But why didn’t they? Throughout the AP debacle, the Immigrations Department has been conspicuously silent; it’s time someone high up start asking questions of them.

But apart from that, I can imagine the sheer frustration of people who are looking to buy cars from other makes besides Proton; a Hyundai Getz 1.6 now retails at RM 77,000.00 OTR. This is already exorbitant for a car that is considered elsewhere as a ‘budget car’. An increase of 30% against the sales price would push that figure up to RM 100,100.00, about the price of a Proton Perdana 2.0 V6. What the hell?!

He should be getting it now; he’s caught up between being a friend and being a superior. It isn’t that he doesn’t know what he needs to do, it’s just that he’s too preoccupied covering for that asshole’s, well, ass. The upshot of it is, he gets the flak. Very noble, but unnecessary.

I’ll be obtaining some forms and templates so he can start charting a system to keep track of personnel performance marked against several benchmarks. I’ve told him to institute something like this before, but I felt at the time that I was in no position to explain to him the need.

He is, after all, about 2 years’ my senior.

Note to self: Prepare sanitized versions of my offline case log for posting.