Today is Wednesday. Since early 2007, I have been having regular teleconferences at night which starts most times at 10pm. Sometimes, the team is a little kinder to me and start at 9pm. If we are on time, the TC will finish by 11.30pm. If things drags on, it will be close to midnight before I get to call it a day. Why such late TCs, you may ask. Well, it's the Project Pongo meetings and the participants are based in California, Delaware, Germany and Malaysia. Most times I attend from the office as it has better connectivity and my phone has a hands free bluetooth. So far, I have not had any goosebumps or eerie feelings staying in so late in the office - not like my next rambling tales of things that goes bump in the.........
Every year, without fail, many Government organizations will find that they have money in the kitty for last minute purchases for the calendar year. They will tender for instruments, expect them to be delivered at the beginning of December and we need to complete the installations by mid December - or the order can be cancelled!! Some years, there will be a bumper order that requires each engineer to have 3 pair of hands, 2 heads and no sleep in order to complete the installation schedules. Or- they negotiate to work nights to get the job completed.
One such occasion happened to me more than a decade ago. I arranged to complete the installation of Gas Chromatographs in the Chemistry Department, starting at 6pm. This was the year when we had an issue with too much pesticide on the greens being sold. To overcome the public outcry arising from that, the Chemistry Department had to screen lots and lots of vegetables. The lab looked more like a kitchen than a lab. You have carrots, choy sam, pak choy, cucumbers, chillies (capsicums) and a host of other vegetables strewn all over being prepared for pesticide residue tests.
I arrived at 6pm as scheduled, started preparing the lab bench for installation of a couple of Gas Chromatographs and at about 7pm, went back to the car to get more tools. From the lab to my car was a long narrow corridor. These was the days when the Chemistry Department operated from the older pre-war bunkers, now since torn down. As I walked back from my car to the lab, I swear that I saw a "person" in a white lab coat at the end of the corridor. I was thinking to myself - why in the world is my customer wearing his lab coat after office hours? As I approached the figure, it turned to the right (which was a dead end as the connecting gate was closed). As I reach that end - I looked around and the "person" was nowhere to be seen!! I walked in the lab and lo and behold, there was my customer, in street clothes, happily reading the newspaper!! I confirmed with him that he was nowhere near the corridor in the past hour!!. You go figure.
On another occasion, on another late night sojourn in the Chemistry Department labs, I finished my work at close to midnight, packed up my stuff and started walking out of the lab with another chemist. Both of us heard footsteps behind us as we walked. My goosebumps popped up!! We gave each other a knowing glance, kept quiet and continued walking. Once we got to the car park, both of us looked back - there was no one behind us, and there shouldn't be as this was already close to midnight!!. We shrugged our shoulders and drove off. This was around the time when there was a rash of deaths in Perak attributed to Loh Shee Fun (a type of noodle) that was purportedly contaminated with boric acid. Only the very old and very young succumbed. Those in between would have severe stomach aches coupled with fevers and diarrhoea. Their stomach and parts of the body like liver and kidneys were removed and stored in a refrigerator in Chemistry Department for toxin screening. We had walked past the refrigerator on our way out. I guess, it may have been "someone" looking for their stomachs!!
On another occasion, the pesticide lab was having some recurrent problems. One of the instruments would fail every few days. When I go to the site and test the instrument, it would behave itself. I get back to the office, within a few hours, a call will come in. Finally the chemist confided in me that she thought some mischievous spirits was disturbing the lab. She sometimes felt like someone was watching over her shoulder when there was no one there. She ended up placing a mirror in front of her desk so as not to be caught unawares in case someone sneaks up on her. It so happened that I had read somewhere that a picture with scenes of mountains and water (like lakes) would placate such spirits. So happened that I had a calendar that had such scenes and I offered them to the chemist. She had them framed up and hung in the lab and would you believe it - no more intermittent problems!!
More than 2 decades ago, there was a murder in the Bangsar district of Kuala Lumpur. A British engineer working in KL had slain his Kenyan wife after finding her cheating on him when he was working. The Kenyan woman had been chopped into multiple parts and the body parts stuffed into one of those large wooden chest that the couple had. When the police arrived after the neighbours called them in, they were faced with blood all over the walls, pieces of body parts in the chest and a meek Britisher giving himself up. The body parts were sent to a coroner, the wooden chest was sent to Chemistry Department and the man to the police lockup. As the chest was evidence in a murder case, the chest was locked up in the evidence room of Chemistry Department. Next morning, the night guard hurriedly told the lab director to test what ever they had brought in the previous night and get it out of the evidence room!! Apparently, for the whole night, he could hear someone banging on the door of the evidence room from the INSIDE!!. There isn't a live soul INSIDE the room.
One more tale before I end this entry. Almost a decade ago, the Chemistry Department decided to tear down the older building structures from which they had been operating. Most of the labs were housed in military styled bunkers from pre-war days. So they build a new Forensic building (which can be seen from MPPJ if you are around the area). One day, one of the lab staff decided to stay a little later than usual to complete his work. The office closes at 4.15pm on most days. When the guard was making his rounds at about 6pm or so, he found the lab staff in a gibbering vegetative state. They called in the local bomoh (local spiritual doctor) and he said that the man probably bumped into a wandering spirit that scared the bejeebers out of him.
Moral of the story - don't stay too late in the Chemistry Department buildings. You never know what you will meet.
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