Getting to know the new neighbors

Apart from meeting up old friends and colleagues, I was interested to know the landscape of the university - obviously things has changed. New people, new laws, new rules. I was interested to find out from everyone how was life since I left in 2008. Anything changed? What changed? What's new? Who is who?  It was nice to just walk around the 'neighborhood' to talk to people - something I thoroughly enjoyed. It was perhaps similar to the feeling of 'balik kampung', and stopping by Mak Su's place, or Pak Lang's joint, or Pak Ngah's workshop and Mak Long's stall. Everyone has stories ... everyone wants to tell. It was great, surreal to say the least, to speak and interact again with the same folks I used to sit for hours and hours chatting and laughing, after a hard day's work. 

Apart from enjoying their companies, I was keen to see how best to create a lasting change in UPM this second time around. Through the years away from UPM, after achieving a few of my life time goals, I couldn't help but to wonder 'what is the point' of all these exercises. The point of working so hard, study so hard, work like crazy, won awards, becoming a Chartered Engineer etc etc.. In most cases, I thought, no one remembers our efforts anyway. Nobody cares in the end. I guess, most normal (perhaps not) middle aged men and women asked the same question now and then. 

My first taste of 'what's important' in creating a lasting change at work came during the interview at UPM in 2016. I began the previous paragraph with a sentence that assumes there was a hint of a lasting change I made during my 1st tour of duty. Well, I didn't know there was any lasting change I made until I went for the interview. In all honesty, I didn't know what to expect during the interview. After gaining my entrepreneurial / industrial experience, I had only one answer prepared in the event the interviewers asked, 'Why do you want to come back?'. And the answer I prepared is the one already stated in this section which is, 'to contribute back'. And in fact, I was asked that question ! But it was not that question that engraved something permanent inside my soul. One of the interviewers asked me, and I quote, 'Zairil, what happened to your Ladang Puchong?'. It was an unexpected question - less technical then what I anticipated. I was snapped back by the fact that ... someone knew about 'my' Ladang Puchong, or rather, the amount of insane work that I did at Ladang Puchong a.k.a LUFTA even after 8 years I left UPM. I did not expect anyone to know because, back then not many wanted to come over to see what we were doing apart from the UAV team. The interview room was slightly dark so I could not properly see who it was who asked me that question. I squint my eyes in a terrible attempt to see if I knew the person who asked the question. I told him, 'Sir, I wish Ladang Puchong is mine but it is not. I helped a bit to make it better by building a runway there. I have no idea what happened to the runway. For 8 years I left it. The last I checked in Google Earth, it looked like it was still there.'. I was still curious who asked me the question. But I was also touched that, people remember things that you leave behind, probably something of a legacy. This was the same word used by an old colleague months later who described in one of the department meetings that and I quote, 'With Ladang Puchong, only Zairil can handle it'. I was pretty sure that interview left a meaningful goal for me which was this time around serving UPM, I was going to leave more legacies - by means of contributing back to the best of my abilities.