Foreign vs Local

Recently there have been lots and lots of people getting married. Each month, there will be at least one wedding dinner waiting for me to attend. Lucky for me because all of them are from different group of friends, which means I can repeatedly wear the same dress without anyone noticing. (Ssshhh...don't tell this to anyone)

The most recent wedding dinner I attended was my ex-colleague's wedding in KL. Few weeks back, I attended another ex-colleague's wedding too, but from different company in Ipoh. Both from different company but both sharing the same scenerio.

I'm not sure if it was just coincidence or that's the way things should be. When you attend your ex-colleague's wedding, you would usually be placed to sit with other ex-colleagues (from the same badge) who have left the company. If the total is less than 10 people to occupy the whole table, then you'll get a mixture of people who are still working in the company in one table. At the other table, probably next to yours, will be the table for the management level of that company. See, this was what happened in both wedding dinners I attended.

Both companies that I have worked for, are similar in certain ways. Both companies having almost the same amount of employees. Both companies are under another giant holding company. The different? One mother company is 100% locally owned with branches all over Malaysia, another is a well-known MNC company owned by Germans where nobody should have never heard of.

Trust me, I enjoyed both the weddings so much, cause that's the only time when we have almost everyone in the house and we couldn't even finish catching up in one night especially for those who I have never met since day one I left the company.

The strange thing is the communication between the ex(s) and the management. Let's first talk about the wedding dinner of the German MNC company. Basically I have 3 bosses back then, a Project Manager (Malaysian), a Financial Director (German) and a Regional Director (Dannish). They arrived way later while all of us have already seated at our tables. Few minutes after their arrival, all of them came to our table to say hi and chat a bit. No one acting cool and no one trying to show who's the boss. Everyone was being friendly and hoping the best for each other though we are no longer under the same company.

Likewise, in that 100% locally owned company, we tend to draw a border line between our 2 tables (management and ex-employees). We sat properly at our seats and they sat at theirs as if all our arse are being glued to the chairs. Interactions were only between the ex-employees with the current employees, and between the current employees with the management. Sounds unhealthy, no? Probably you might ask, why not we, the ex-employees, walk over to their table and greet them. We did. Well, at least we THOUGHT of doing so, but only when we wanted to start our act, they wanted to leave. They passed by us and walked to the exit without saying 'Hi' nor 'Bye'.

After reading this, you might assume the relationship among us must have been terrible that has caused such situation to have happen. In fact, that's not true, we would still send sms to each other during birthdays and we still keep in touch once in a while. But when come to situation like the above, it seems a bit embarassing for both parties. We were waiting for each other to take the initiative to walk forward.

Don't ask me why. Probably it's just the kind of mentality inside Asians' mind which is not as receptive as Westerners' mind.

posted by Survon @ 12:59 PM,