Retro: We Stood Tall and Delivered - A Safety Officer's Memoir - 18/11/24

 

Title: We Stood Tall and Delivered – A Safety Officer’s Memoir

There I was, being driven to the Hin Bus Depot by my daughter, with her friend Nina—or was it Lina?—asking me questions about meditation, kundalini, yoga... all the way there. HBD is where the heartbeat of Georgetown pulses strongest every weekend. My buddy Ben Ronjen runs his “Shipwreck Store” there, and I try to make it every Sunday to hang out with him and our mutual friend Eric, the Kiwi photographer.

Over coffee and small talk about what’s left for old guys like us to keep the spirit burning, we decided—we’re going East. A road trip to Kuala Terengganu and maybe down to Kerteh. Eric will bring his camera. I’ll bring my memories, my sketchbooks. We’ll document the Petronas Refinery from a personal, artistic, and historical lens. A collaboration between a New Zealand photographer and a Malaysian artist who once walked that very construction site as a Health and Safety Officer when the whole thing was just being born from dirt and blueprints.

I still remember my first job after returning from almost 24 years overseas—no clue how to start again. My bridges to the past were burned. But fate threw me into a hard hat and steel-toed boots. First with Ibai Bina Sdn. Bhd., then with one of the world’s largest heavy lifting companies, Van Seumeren RomStar. My crew? Almost entirely Iban boys from Sarawak. The work? Raw, dangerous, beautiful. We built something that now lights up the sky with flames as you drive by on the highway—an unintentional monument of progress, labor, sacrifice.

My sketchbook never left my side. As a Safety Officer, I wandered the site, but as an artist, I sat and sketched: men climbing scaffolds, sparks flying, machines roaring. I was the guy reminding them, “Wear your hard hat and your glasses, peckerhead!” But quietly, I was absorbing every moment—every triumph, every near miss, every lost life.

Yes, lives were lost. People died, because arrogance outranked caution. That truth lives in my memory, in my journal, in the lines I drew with trembling hands. As much as I laughed with the boys and stood tall alongside international crews from Bangladesh, England, Indonesia, and Holland... I also bore witness. That’s why this project with Eric matters.

It’s not just about industry or nostalgia. It’s about capturing the soul of what happened in Kerteh and Gebeng between 1998 and 2001. A refinery rose. So did I.

We stood tall and delivered.