From bad to worse

I had made a bad decision and jumped from the frying pan into the fire!

Comments about this point on ABC Open 500 words – On the job.

I could have been jailed if I didn’t do my work right! The thought of going to jail swung me into action to seek another job, but I’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire!

My old workplace introduced an imported ‘Let-jail-us’ procedure to help maintaining and upgrading the computer systems we had built over the years. With the ‘technique’, computer programmers were paired up to check on the quality of each other’s work, transfer knowledge and make plan together for the next round of maintenance. The pairings were supposed to change frequently to avoid expertise lying stagnant in particular areas. The approach was what developers deemed ideal even if the work would take longer. In reality, developers hardly had time to transfer knowledge or plan their work with others. One horrified setback of the ‘modus operandi’ was that any problem we caused the company due to our faulty work could potentially result in the prosecution and jailing of the pair!

From bad to worse poem

(Conceit-style poem)

<<Story related to the poem>>

My old workplace is a frying pan,
By introducing a new work plan,
I am so scared of being deep-fried,
If my work was found as misapplied.

My new workplace is a real hot fire,
Rises from hell and emits strong ire,
Bullying and stress burn staff outright,
The firm’s success is built on staff’s plight.

Image credit
by Elizabeth Haslam.

The sinister side of Papa

A lecherous old man who pretends to be good Santa,
The sexual abuse of young girls is on his agenda.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – What I was wearing.

On the day I left Sungei Besi transit camp for Australia, I wore a yellow T-shirt bought from the camp’s only grocery and sundry shop, which was run by a Chinese Malaysian couple. My shoes, jeans and travel bag all were bought with my money by ‘Papa’.

Papa was a Cantonese-speaking, Chinese-Malaysian man in his 60s who was thin, bald, agile, vivacious and quick-tongued, and insisted that the Vietnamese people called him ‘Papa’. He looked after the camp’s general store that contained goods for the refugees’ daily use: small food and drink buckets, sheets, blankets,…

I happened to know Papa when one day, on his regular walk around the camp, he visited our ‘shipping-container’ residence. All the girls and women crowded around the ‘Asian Santa Claus’. He gave each of us a packet of Nasi Lemak (Malaysian rice dish) wrapped in banana leaf. I could never forget the fragrant and rich coconut rice as well as the crispy fried anchovies, the sweet-and-sour garlic chilli sauce and the big sunny-side-up egg. Decades later, after many trips to Malaysia I could never find any Nasi Lemak that tasted so nice as the one Papa gave me that day. Maybe the pale Malaysian milk tea, the instant noodles, half-cooked soggy fried chicken, insipid and tainted steamed salted fish and other lacklustre meals that I invariably received day after day in the camp had accentuated the flavour of that dish?

The sinister side of Papa poem

(Epigram-style poem)

<<Story related to the poem>>

A lecherous old man who pretends to be good Santa,
The sexual abuse of young girls is on his agenda.

Image credit
by Andy Batt.

The convent

Things may have turned out differently had I was given my own safe space when I arrived in Australia as a refugee.

Comments about this post on ABC Open DRUM – Living alone.

April 1984, I arrived in Australia and stayed at Enterprise Hostel, Springvale in Melbourne. A week later, a religious Sister took me home to a six-bedroom Burwood parish house that accommodated thirteen Catholic Vietnamese refugees and me – a Buddhist.

Duty, honour, country

I have a duty to honourably commit myself to serve this country just like my father.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Family trait.

Ten people were in the meeting room, plus seven others in offices around Australia hooked up to the room’s conference phone. It was a big meeting, with the attendance of section colleagues and business stakeholders, to review Monsieur Yuppie’s system specification document.

Duty, honour, country poem

(Sonnet-Petrarchan-style poem)

<<Story related to the poem>>

When power frowns at the tight deadline claim,
And staff resource for demand is so low,
Yet future staff retrenchment is to grow,
The workplace chaos then becomes aflame!

The Death God

The Death God’s visit symbolised the death of my career.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – My secret fear.

I froze with fear as the Death God, in her white hooded robe, slid across the floor towards me. She exhaled over my face; I felt myself floating in the air, looking down at my dying body which greying gradually from my feet to my upper torso.

The social-group-monger

I felt powerless to fight against injustice borne by someone who happened to hold power in a social group they created.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Bully.

As my children were teenagers, I had more time to banish my lonely migrant symptoms by seeking social interactions with other adults.

I joined a mixed group. I remember that I felt so safe and welcomed with the group leader’s friendly manner.

The social-group-monger poem

(Gwawdodyn-style poem)

<<Story related to the poem>>

Build a social group and he’s a King,
Free to cause folks emotional sting,
To gain controls over those lonely souls,
To bully, harass or have a fling!

Image credit
by Andy Rennie.