I have now discovered the pleasures of auditing, a field where one’s sadistic streak can come to the fore and cause pain and suffering to the poor auditee as one stands over them checking their work / business practices with an eagle eye!
We were on an island for the entire week, checking out a company which manufactured jeans – right up my street! The brand is moderately well known and I found it extremely intriguing to observe how my favorite trousers are made, from the ordering of raw material in huge quantities to the cutting, sewing, washing and ironing. I’ll say one thing about auditing: it sure gives you a good overview of all sorts of jobs available.
The audit itself consists primarily of following a checklist, asking questions and trying to establish where one could improve business practices.
In the evening we (my boss and I) generally went out for an Indian meal. In my enthusiasm to be as culturally aware as possible I tried eating with only my right hand and nearly broke my wrist trying to tear chicken off its bone! At least I managed not to spray food and fragments all over my boss, a nice impression that would have made!
On the last day of the audit, the whole company celebrated the Hungry Ghost season. Comprised mainly of a Chinese workforce (People are quite race-conscious here, the Chinese are perceived as industrious, the Malays as lazy and the Indians as sly; In a job interview the employer would most likely employ a candidate of the same race as himself – no joke!) almost the entire staff turned up laden with as much food (=offerings) they could carry. I’ve never seen such a spread of Chinese delicacies. They then proceeded to stick incense sticks into the offerings and lit them under prayers. Someone pushed some incense into my hands and told me to go round the table, holding up the burning sticks, jerking them at intervals and ask for good health for myself, my family and also for a good husband! Quite funny that was, they tried to sell me on the perks of a Chinese husband. When the incense burnt down, they lit a fire in a metal cauldron and proceeded to throw in paper symbolizing money, passports, clothing and gold. Judging by the amount of paper we burnt, the ghosts are complete shopaholics, they must have been influenced by the worldly pleasures of Merdeka Sale (whole of Malaysia has a sale on for the entire month of August every year).
All that done (yes, we did actually manage to get some work done that day!) the women practically charged up to the table where the food was spread out and took all the incense sticks out, dusted the stuff off and shot away with their treasures. We then ate all the offerings for lunch, as the ghosts had thoughtfully left the physical chow for us, having only eaten the spirit of the food. The fare was all homemade, absolutely scrumptious! These Chinese women can really cook! Hope my brother ends up with a Chinese woman one day; the men are apparently terrible in the kitchen…
Yesterday was Merdeka Day – Independence Day in Malaysia. We went to the Petronas Towers to witness the event, and got caught up in the surging crowd. It was quite awful actually, there were so many sexually deprived imbeciles out that night we went home left that place quite quickly! Moving along to Bukit Bintang (the main shopping street) we encountered people spraying colourful streamers around, out of aerosol cans. That was far more fun, seeing them really go wild!
Before I left for the Audit, K & I relaxed in KL’s largest park, the lake gardens. They had a huge aviary, with hundreds of bird species. I’ve never seen so many funny looking birds on such close quarters before!
Today our coworker just suggested that we need fattening up, as Malaysia is famous for its fantastic food and our parents would feel that we’d been well cared for! Funny their mentality! And contrary to expectations it was not a Chinese women who suggested it, but an Indian (!). (Most Chinese women I’ve encountered tend to ply one with food, one woman at the office practically shoved stuff down my neck - I nearly had to be rude to get her to stop.)