The Petty People Running Me Out of Malaysia

Every time I tell anyone where I am and what I'm doing, their immediate response is always "Man, that's amazing. U must love it. U might stay over there forever, huh?" And I realize how blessed I am to have this opportunity. Unfortunately, I can not shake the fact that some of the other involved parties in my project are somewhat ruining the experience for me. I’ve told quite a few people about the client I work for insisting that we don’t get along because “I refuse to conform to the demands of petty people.” I’m sad to report that its getting worse, I’m losing patience and respect for anyone associated with our client as it seems that their company’s culture is turning normal people in grown up cry babies and tattle tails. Because they’re in the position of simply asking and having nothing expected of them. It’s the classic case of “Give an inch, and they will take a mile.” It started with minor things; requesting for test to be redone when there is no evidence that there was anything wrong with the previous tests, complaining about us using recycled paper, etc. Because it’s all our money, time, and effort that makes these things happen, they do no mind asking for anything under the sun. Oh, but wait, it gets worse…

Then it escalated to pointless additions to paperwork. Processes which were previously 1 or 2 steps made into 4 or 5 steps to get to the exact same end. Bickering about the difference between 30 carpenters documented and the 27 they say they saw even though they don’t bother walking to more difficult parts of the site, etc. Our test cube situation is a telling example. Here in Malaysia, each time concrete is poured cube-shaped samples are poured to be tested for strength at 7 and 28 days. Usually cubes being too weak is the issue, they were complaining that many of our cubes were too strong. I’m from the US, if you’re supposed to give me grade 35 strength and you give me grade 50, I won’t complain about getting $50 instead of $35. To make matters worse, the client’s site representatives, who were the ones asking for all this foolishness, wanted to eliminate all evidence that they actually requested it. Now they want to have an opinion (well, actually the right to approve or disapprove) all kinds of paperwork which doesn't concern them in any manner. A few times their resident engineer (a power position on site) would make a decision, but when we try to make the decision official in documentation, he would scurry to keep us from revealing the fact that he requested it; he wanted us to act like we just randomly decided to do it. Some people, into diplomacy, are willing to just comply regardless; not me.

Then our consultant engineer was holding up the project by questioning the work of EVERY other engineer despite his expertise being different from theirs. The process is backwards here to begin with. Despite having this man - a C&S engineer with specialty of building and structures – being paid by the project already, he does not design solutions for on-going C&S issues. Despite producing much of our structural designs, he refuses to help us with issues, even on aspects he designed. His response when we ask for his help is “my service would be expensive, you can’t afford my services.” He, or should I say ‘they’, we’re forced to hire an outside engineer to design the solution and we have to propose it to them for their approval. As if that isn’t enough, he (a building specialist) is never satisfied and has questioned the expertise of our scaffolding specialists, our soil specialists, or bored piling specialists, and everyone else. In the name of diplomacy, we have to honor their concerns and try to get more explanation or technical discussion, which takes time; time, in life as well as construction, is the one thing that you can NEVER get back once it is gone. He’s even tried to implement his own “re-writes” to another engineer’s designs. Through all this, he tries to play “good guy” whenever he is confronted; with the whole, “well, someone has to ensure that the things are being done correctly.” Well, if we could eliminate the middle man and have you design C&S solutions and talk to any other engineers if you have concerns, we wouldn’t have these issues.

Now, it’s the childish tattle telling (often false) that is getting on my nerves now. Conventional wisdom would say that in a professional environment, if you have a problem with something someone is doing, you should try to deal with them. Only if that doesn't work should you go to ur immediate supervisor and so on, right? Wrong here. Our site surveyor went on leave for 3 days to handle some family issues, which was communicated to our client’s site staff. Well, despite already having the situation explained to her, our Senior Clerk of Works (the most power hungry and petty of them all) writes a letter to the bosses of all parties complaining that there is no surveyor on site. The client and consultant bosses, also being increasingly disrespectful and petty, make a huge issue out of this during our site meetings. This in addition to the other issues that didn’t concern the clients which they have made huge issues about (temporary building structures, calibrations on machinery, etc), they even went so far as to try to forbid our staff from taking leave on meeting days. How is their decision in any capacity?

It's unfortunate for any decision to be taken out of your hands by other people; and I wouldn't say that is completely the case. But I will say, working 6 days a week at a site which people who I don't really respect because of their petty and childish antics is wearing on me. It could be cultural difference, it could just be them. Either way, it's a situation I may need to remove myself from before I truly tell someone about themselves and paint myself as the tall, angry Black man that everyone in Malaysia fears so much, and who I've tried to avoid being so that I don't come off as intimidating. I'm the youngest one on site, I just expect everyone to act like adults. The blame game and tattle telling with no direct communication isn't productive.

The Enemy Among Us

Right after our return from Chinese New Years holiday, we noticed we had an extra crew member at sight. He's a seemingly nice older Pakistani man with a constant smirk on his face and who is always way too dressed up for the fact that we live on a construction site; usually a dress shirt, slate grey vest, and slacks to go with our obligatory hard hat and work boots. It's a shame I found out his purpose at our site and therefore we could never be friends. When we come to work in the morning, at the return times from each tea break, and anywhere near time to leave, he would be standing near the front gate watching us. Over the course of the day, you see him randomly walking and watching - never writing, reading, or interacting - only watching. You guessed it, he is the corporate spy. No other scope of work, just spying. He was replaced at another site so that he could come to ours and snitch about anyone's tardiness, early leaving, or anything else he may think is noteworthy in a bad way. As one of the ppl who depends on others entirely for my transportation, I'm one of those who is screwed by this. My boss or supervisor usually picks me and my Filipino co-worker up in the mornings. We are supposed to be there at 8 am sharp, we usually arrive between 8:15 and 8:30 am. Guess who's face is waiting at the gate every time? The same two gentlemen who usually provide me rides, my project manager and senior supervisor, don't want to arrive at their homes any later than they usually do. This means that if they are used to making it home at 6:30 pm or so, and taking us home takes them about 25 minutes out of their way, they want to leave earlier to compensate for the time spent. So of course, that means the same slightly smiling face sees me leave before 6 pm every day too. No good can come from him being at my job. And therefore, I've deemed him "the enemy among us"

The Challenge

I knew the day was coming, but I didn't know exactly when. The day I'm speaking of is the day where one of the older gentlemen at one of the parties involved in my project publicly questions my abilities because I'm young and inexperienced. Well, at our site meeting yesterday, the head of our consultant engineering side did just that. Even went so far as to call me "incompetent." Now, I understand in spirit what he's saying. I'm young, I'm not Malaysian (as he point out a few times) and I'm not experienced. It's a big, expensive project and the man doesn't really know me or what I do. So to be real, I understand his concern although I still wish he would've taken it up with me personally first before trying to make things into a public issue. So I have to use it as motivation. The point of coming here is to build the resume getting REAL experience. It's already real and if I've truly caught his attention, it's probably about to get realer very soon. So that means I gotta get my game tight and become better at what I do. Adversity builds character. A man is not judged by how he acts in times of comfort, he is judged by how he responds in times of adversity. There's a lot to being 'great' at my job and it's not gonna happen overnight because you literally have to have seen and know how everything is built efficiently. But I'm committed to working t0 be better at it. So as of today, can't say whether I'll sink or swim, but I'm jumping in the water. Selamat malam...

An Interesting Convo To Have...

The construction industry in general is one that is dominated by men. There tend to be some women in the headquarters but I work at the construction site office. The management can feature women if they're not scared to work outside in an environment filled with large machinery, safety hazards, and confrontation in the name of compliance and protocol. As far as general workers, the everyday physical demands of the job seem to dissuade women as candidates; especially when all this lifting, moving, hacking, bar bending, carpentry, masonry and everything happens in a place like Malaysia which is summer all year long. Combined with that trend, here in Malaysia, the general workers live in temporary housing on the job site itself. The carpenters have built themselves a village of housing structures and a bathroom facility. This bathroom has become fairly offensive as far as the odors and there is only one tub to wash in. So the guys usually go in their briefs and wash from the tub water. Out of the 30 or more general workers on the site, only two of them are women. As with most of my workers, they don't speak more than about 4 popular words of English so we can't communicate beyond me gesturing and using my tone to suggest what tasks I want them to do at work. But if I could communicate with them, there are several questions I would ask them. How do u feel about working in such a physical profession surrounded by organized chaos? What is it like sharing such a primitive living environment and bathing in an unhygienic bathroom facility with all men? Do u ever deal with sexism in such an environment? What is it like working an unconventional job for women in a Muslim country? Furthermore, and most importantly, how did u end up doing this? I think I'm missing out on an interesting convo...

The Job: What I Actually Do

Here is the answer to the ever-popular question "So what do you actually do?" which I get every time after I surprise people by saying that I'm not an African studying here in Malaysia. Also, the actual words in the title of my position contradicts with my degree and the nature of what I actually do day-to-day. I am Project Engineer for a construction company called Bumimetro Construction. I am working on a high rise condo project called One Kiara; pictured above. The project is in a very high end area of KL called Mont Kiara. Each individual unit has it's own elevator and elevator lobby, the units range from 2000 - 7000 square feet and most cost over 1 million ringgits(RM). As for me, I am vital to ensuring the quality and compliance with the drawings as well as the optimal management of time and money. So on a daily basis, I'm conducting inspections of important members to ensure quality and specifications before they're cast in concrete (which they use for everything here), testing building materials to ensure their strength and quality, calculating and reporting material quantities to reduce unnecessary wastage, helping coordinate my workers (mostly Indonesian and Bangladeshi) as quality control for the work that they are preforming, and lately writing stinging letters to our client or consultants in response to their often irrational or excessive requests or questioning. Also, my project manager has been involving and simultaneously educating me about how the logistics and large-scale coordination aspect is thought out and planned. I can proudly say that I do think my major has done a lot to help prepare me. Being around coworkers who have strictly engineering background, which don't go into the construction process or financial sides, I have knowledge of reading drawings, contract stipulation, human resource management, construction techniques, reasoning and terminology. I also benefit from the fact that I have a strong work ethic and am a fast learner. For the past few weeks, I have been the only engineer on-site for our project. Most of the others on our management team - a surveyor, a clerk, a safety manager, a quality control & assurance person - have no involvement in the actual construction processes ongoing. Those others who are involved - our project manager and site supervisor - call most of the shots but don't handle any of the day-to-day operations paperwork or quality control aspect. That leaves me at this moment feeling like somewhat of a 'One Man Island' on a 150,000,000 ringgit project; on top of the 6 day, 60+ hour work week, it's a bit of a grind. The silver lining is that I'm fairly good at what I do and get respect from my coworkers for my work ethic and acumen. My boss now wants me to stay for an extra year until the completion of the project. I don't know about all that...

Music as a Cure-All

Date: 8/25/10

“Music is the rhythm of life,” a wise man once said. That wise man was me. As much as I tell other people that, how’d I get away from it for such a long period of time? Just a few days ago, I was a little frustrated with things. One of the subcontractors at the jobsite was holding up our schedule (which would get us, not the subcontractor, cussed out next time we have a meeting with the client) and I seemed to be the only person from the management team on site that cared; I had to talk to the boss about what we could do to aid the problem. They took our company car. We still don’t have the Internet in the apartment. I was gonna have to switch rooms into a room that was currently bright pink. And it got ridiculously hot again, which always seems to make people a little more irritable. I won’t say I was losing it or anything, but I wasn’t in the best of moods for a short period. Then something miraculous happened. I stopped using my iPod just as a device to search for available wi-fi but bought some new headphones and turned on the music. I had put the Roots’ new album “How I Got Over” on my iPod but hadn’t given it a good listen yet. I just let the album take me away. Before I knew it, I would be waiting to cross the street somewhere or riding in the car bobbing my head. The subcontractor got more manpower and machinery at the sight so now they are working at a much better pace. The project manager is giving us rides back and forth to work and we got news that we will have another car soon. They painted the pink room white and gave me brand new furniture for the move. And even in the Malaysian heat, “The Fire,” “Walk Alone,” and “The Day” among others by the Roots were keeping me cool. In addition to the usual suspects like Nas, Lupe, Kweli, Wale, and NC’s own phenomenal talent J. Col. There’s a reason I always had my iPod in during my years in college. I don’t know where I’d be without it.