Working Saturday

I left some documents at the office which I needed for the weekend. So I ended up heading back to the office, which brought back the memories of working on a Saturday.

I remember at the beginning of working in Malaysia of working on every Saturday. A fee months Ayer reporting to work, the then Prime Minister, Pak Lah announced that Government Servants only needed to work on every alternate Saturdays, followed by a year also later, the ruling that Saturday ws now off.

Working on Saturdays were actually useful for my Unit as the headache of organizing the weekend rounds were a lot less, the Saturday Day Care gave us opportunity to see sick patients, and scans and other tests could be organize a lot faster.

I also remembered the dress code. It was batik, but I prefer short sleeves and no tie myself. Usually we had sessions with the Medical Students and usually it was full I banter. The only problem was the traffic to get home after that, that I ended up usually leaving after 2 pm as we tended to get stuck along Federal Highways.

To be honest, I do not really mind working on Saturdays as long as other people does the same as well. I could still get a lie in on Sundays.

Morning in Damansara

I had some personal matter to sort out today. This involved heading to the Passport Division of the Immigrations Department at Pusat Bandar Damansara. Being the early bird, I was amongst the first one to arrive with my number being 6001.

What I wanted to say was, the service was very good. There was this particular Chinese lady who was quite senior judging from the bars on her uniform collar, who was so nice and courteous. Unfortunately, I did not catch her name. She directed and assisted everybody, especially those with kids and the elderly. I was served very promptly and was kept informed every step of the way without the need to ask.

It certainly helped by the fact that the place was rather empty that morning - perhaps the crowd will build up a bit later. I was also dressed in batik - it was Thursday after all. They recognized straight away that I was a Government Servant which certainly helped! No, I did not wear a gold-plated name tag like some do! The service was good enough as it was.

I got the heads up about getting the all the formal business if it involved the government on Thursday from one of my patient. There was a catch though, you will need to wear batik, and better still to have some sort of badge to indicate that you were a Government Servant. Maybe this only applies to men however, but so far it had worked a charm! Everybody was extra nice especially if you did business in Putrajaya. It even worked with the police! Lesson to be learned here.